Guild Wars 2

It makes perfect sense. They want to fight other people, and that place is almost always guaranteed to have people. They stay, because you keep trying and failing for six hours.

I’m not sure what video you’re talking about, though.

It’s a PvP zone … people go there to kill other players. I’m not really sure what you were expecting. Since you can get siege blueprints from the chest, it’s in their best interest to make sure you guys don’t finish it.

I wouldn’t necessarily advocate stacking +heal, even for support guardians. This thread on how it scales is worth a read.

Bodybroker.4653:

Here’s the best one i have of my Ele (lvl 40) at the moment.

Very cool shot. Nicely done!

Vyral, I use mostly Carrion. Healing scales very poorly right now, though I do have some cleric-y jewelry for more toughness and a little +heal.

I’d also like to know what the trigger is … on swap? on getting hit? what? And for how much?

poot.5487:

PvE, on the other hand, is not even close. Again – not a coincidence. Not just an isolated screwup by Bob down in the mail room. Systemic, foundational, worthy of much discussion.

There really does need to be SOME effort required, else the craft becomes completely worthless.

Durzlla.6295:

In short, make sure you’re dealing -some- damage, because otherwise the event will register you as gone, where as if you keep the events attention and rez people and that sort of people you’ll have no issues.

There was a centaur boss in Harathi Hinterlands I believe that spawned several times while we were in the zone. Besides rezzing/dropping a couple of heals/dropping Static Field (mostly to create stacks of vulnerability), I spent the rest of the time DPSing. Only got silver each time.

Most events don’t seem too bad for this, but a few definitely require you to do a full DPS burn to get credit. It encourages you to play selfishly, just in case.

For a city, Lion’s Arch. Coolest city I’ve seen in a game. It’s a perfect mix of beautiful architecture and shady underbelly.

/petitions for Lion’s Arch themed player housing

For a zone…eesh. That’s hard. Would be a tie for me between Godslost Swamp (love the atmosphere and statues!!!), Mount Maelstrom (the weather is beautiful, and that volcano interior is just epic) and Fireheart Rise. I was running through there near sunset and the light was so golden and gorgeous.

I do really enjoy Orr too, though, especially Malkor’s Leap. I seriously duck when the dragon shadows pass over me.

Yeah, there should be more than 2 sets that aren’t coats. I even like a couple of the coats a lot, but they got the variety right with cloth armor. There, there’s a huge range of skimpy to modest stuff, in varying styles. Even heavy has a bit more variety than medium.

…Glad my main character wears light armor.

Yeah, there are a few group boss fights where I stopped to rez one or two people/dropped a couple of Geysers in there where I did not receive gold credit (sometimes got silver, often bronze) although I’d been there the entire time.

It would be nice if other activities, like rezzing people who had been engaged with the boss recently, also counted toward participation.

Thank god there’s finally an MMO that’s not trying to stick me in a Skinner Box and put me on an endless gear treadmill to stay remotely competitive.

I want my character to actually be great, not a coat hanger for greatness.

I’ve linked this before on another forum, but I’ll just drop this here, too. It’s both well-written and, imo, quite thought-provoking.

Five Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted

So many people have professed to enjoy the ride to 80, but complain about a “lack of endgame” when there’s really more to do here at max level than games with gear tiers — stretched out by lockout timers and RNGfests — have. Required gear grinds, RNG loot tables and lockouts aren’t content — they’re a rather transparent way to camouflage a lack of content.

BobbyStein

If there are scenes triggering near certain vendor NPCs, we should probably move them farther away.

While you’re at it, can you please make bank tellers not have any lines? Standing at the bank in Lion’s Arch for more than a couple of minutes should show you why I’d request that.

Same thing for crafting vendors, especially the cooking one (since people seem to run back and forth a lot for that craft in particular). I often turn off my sound completely while in town at the bank or crafters because I can’t stand it.

Also, please look at frequency of elementalist chatter again. Putting 10 points into Arcane for Elemental Attunement has the chance for the following to trigger on every attunement swap:

• Something attunement related
• Something related to the boon you gain for that attunement
• Something related to the fury you gain on attunement

I actually like the audio cues for conditions on me. I do not, however, need my character reminding me what boon I just gave myself or what attunement I’m in, because I already know.

You guys seem to have made the effort to vary them up, but there should be some system of suppressing the chatter entirely so that it doesn’t trigger more than once every 5 minutes or so.

She’s not repeating the exact same things over and over … she just won’t ever shut up.

“WATER!”
“I can outrun a centaur!”
“Feelin’ hot!”
“You’ll have to hit harder than that.”
“Refreshing!”
“AIR!”

etc. etc.

Just shut up, Ruse. Shut up.

IkeTATARI

my Water Staff Elementalist I can keep whole groups up for the entirety of a dungeon boss fight

Healing is pretty weak, even stacking +heal and having teammates use their blast finishers in your combo fields. You’d do much better “keeping your whole group up” by maintaining protection as much as possible, and keeping tough mobs weakened/blinded.

Perhaps you simply mean that you put a lot of points in water traits, I don’t know, but yeah. Mitigation >>>>>> Healing in this game.

Imo the problem isn’t even the low drop rate of blue crafting mats. It’s not even the fact that even as a cook, I have butter coming out of my ears.

It’s the fact that SO MUCH blue and green gear drops out in the world. Cut that back, and crafted items actually gain some value.

I reported a recipe today for armorsmith that was called … crap, something plant-y (was in Caledon Forest) but the actual recipe in my crafting list was called Duelist Chain Gloves.

It’s possible the recipe took, it just ended up with a totally different name.

nudge Just trying to get a few more opinions on this. More that I’m missing besides duration?

Awesome, I didn’t figure it was intentional.

Nicely done. I haven’t spent nearly the time on my lowbie guard as ele, but you definitely opened up some applications/synergies I hadn’t considered.

Eh, I’ll try some of your all’s suggestions. It’s a weapon I want to like, but it feels very awkward and unintuitive to use to me. I had not considered combining with Justice … but I’m not sure that’ll make that weird cone/orb synergy any better.

Right now I keep it on me solo for tagging event mobs, otherwise I prefer melee to actually impact the fight.

My guard is my baby alt. Very fun, though.

Second pic is with a fellow guardian friend in the background.

Rainshine.5493:

Evasive Arcana lacks a visual effect when it triggers in water (visual bug). It also doesn’t work at all underwater, which seems pretty poor for a Tier 3 trait.

This got skipped? No visual is a minor bug, I realize, but a bug none-the-less. The fact it doesn’t work underwater may or may not be intended.

To be clear, I am in combat … this is not a product of trying to dodgeroll out of combat.

Zenyatoo.4059:

Whenever you want to heal an area throw down a geyser or mist whatever it’s called (staff water 5) and then roll into it. Cleansing wave will activate and combo with yourself to cleanse teammates of conditions in the area as well as heal them for ~2k

You’d be wasting the Cleansing Wave most likely since Healing Rain removes conditions, too. Better to swap into another attunement (earth if possible if teammates are hurting) as you roll to add some bleed damage to foes in the area while granting protection to your buds.

Care to link to the chart?

I don’t care either way, it’s an arbitrary number. I wasn’t remotely “done” with a character — or the game — when I hit 20 in GW1. Now that I’m 80 in GW2, I’m still not remotely done with a character or the game.

There’s no gear creep, so why would you feel like you’re being left behind?

Bloodtau

They’d need to limit it though, only characters with characters linked to that server can view and post in it though.

Limit posting, maybe, but not viewing. If people are considering swapping servers/researching before creating characters, seeing the different “tones” the servers have could be very useful.

Vargs.6234:

Hey man, crap on healing power all you want, but boon duration is awesome. I wish there were more ways to get it.

You know cooks make food that combines magic find while under a boon + boon duration, right?

Maybe another stat combination, too; I’ve hit 400 but have quite a bit of discovery left to do.

DrakeWurrum.6049:

More appealing, yes, but what we need is more defensive stats, not less. Toughness, Vitality, and Compassion should all be viable methods for building defensively.

Unfortunately, while this isn’t exactly the topic of the thread, very few people actually value Toughness.

If +heal also extended my protection and regeneration boons, I’d consider that a defensive boost. Would probably have complaints from classes that don’t rely on boons as much, though.

I played with a toughness heavy set for awhile at lower levels. It did not seem to serve me as well as higher vitality, even though I have a ton of condition removal (which in theory should make toughness more appealing, as I already have counters to condition damage).

thenewzero.7246:

Edit: I kind of wish they would give Healing Power a dual purpose, and instead make it a stat that boosts heals and increases Boon duration. That way it’s like the “support” stat. Might make it more useful, since it would also increase offensive buff uptime.

That would be sexy, and would make it much more appealing.

utildai.5319:

I don’t see any comparisons with the traits along with gear which has heal power on it as well. Is there anyone looking into that?

Speaking of which, how the heck do I find my base heal of a skill or my overall heal power for that matter?

You find out the “base” heal with no points into +healing.

You check your heal power by hovering over your Vitality in the Hero panel.

There is no trait like that, unless Jayne is talking about Elemental Attunement, which does grant regen on attune.

I ran the same kind of tests in beta and came to the same conclusion. Some +healing is OKish for personal use, especially if you have high vit; however as a support stat it’s pretty worthless for an ele. Honestly, it’s pretty worthless overall imo.

Guardians fare slightly better when stacking heal for support, but largely because of Tome of Courage.

A few builds have been posted here.

Evasive Arcana lacks a visual effect when it triggers in water (visual bug). It also doesn’t work at all underwater, which seems pretty poor for a Tier 3 trait.

Premixed

It’s funny how the ‘learn to play’ people never actually think to teach and just belittle.
My ele is only late 30’s and already finding pretty much everything must be kited / cc’d to hell because 5-6 hits and I’m dead.

Someone turned me on to Glyph of Storms recently, and I thank them for it. Cast in earth it’s an AoE blind that persists for several seconds. Very nice as a group support skill OR solo.

Early on eles really are very squishy; a lot of their defense comes from traits. Elemental Attunement (10 pts in Arcane) is lovely, you get protection every time you attune to earth (take 1/3 less damage) and regen when you attune to water. The 5-point Earth trait is also nice passive defense.

But yes, you’ll always have to move well.

Rohirrim

And people say that Elementalists are ok, they probably play a signet GS warrior and this is their first MMO in their life yet they want to appear “cool” in the forums

My 80 is an ele. My highest alt is level 16, a guardian. Is it easier to play? Yup. Doesn’t mean the ele is, as the OP states, “weak and pathetic” and not viable.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the ele is 100% perfect and cannot use any tweaks at all. I DO think the eles’ downed skills could use a look. I think underwater combat is unfun, largely because of the very low damage overall coupled with a lack of available combos.

But that’s not how people are phrasing it. They’re all “the sky is falling” and almost nobody wants to listen to any constructive advice from people who are finding the class viable. They just want to QQ because they want to stack full berserker’s gear and then implode.

Good lord. Did this inferiority complex really need another thread? It’s not nearly as bad as most people are making it out to be.

This is what I’ve been playing with, I’m liking it but I need to make some tweaks to be sure it’s the “final product.”

Things I love about it:

• AoE condi removal on water attune
• Potential for more AoE condi removal, or blind, or two forms of damage on dodge roll plus they count as blast finishers. Internal cooldown of 10 seconds, but still amazing imo.
• Cripple on attuning to earth adds extra CC for kiting.
• Being able to maintain a relatively high uptime on protection/regen, and might is always nice.
• Being able to keep my group always swifted in WvW
• Soothing Mist was on par with guardians Virtue of Resolve regen when last I tested … Healing Ripple is healing for just under 2k in my pretty crappy gear at 80 (most of it very outdated) and both are nice “freebies” for being in water.

If you don’t have a thief doing the perma-weakness thing, you can do it yourself at the expense of sitting in earth attunement more. It works OK with dual daggers as well, though ultimately staff has the stronger support options, particularly through the use of combo fields.

I am aiming for a mix of Carrion and Cleric’s gear. The idea is to still do decent damage while not imploding when a boss looks at you, and having respectable healing (which pairs nicely with your higher vit). I do switch out my utility skills some, though with staff I find it very hard to justify losing Arcane Wave because it’s another blast finisher. I’m also liking Glyph of Storms a lot for the AoE blind you can drop in earth. Makes some clusterkitten much more doable. I also like Arcane Shield though since you can cast it during channels and not break the channel. Can’t decide which I want more at this point.

All that said, I still nub it up and I’m sure this build could use some tweaks. I may look back a year from now and go “Oh my god, what was I thinking!” but I’m enjoying it at the moment. Your mileage may vary if you try it. I have nowhere near the health a carrion-heavy exotic gear set will give me right now (sitting at about 14k health) and for PvE and dungeons I’m still rarely dying. WvW I implode if heavily focused but that goes for almost any class. I anticipate no real problems when I get proper gear.

(At least I finally replaced those level 56 boots … :B )

Quintal

Another solution would be to just make the autoattacks on non fire staff suck less.

If you think perma-weakness is sucky, I don’t really know what to say.

The particle effects.

Avatar Roku.1653:

I have no trouble whatsoever underwater, in fact I feel more powerful than on the ground (using staff up there) thanks to the water skill bursts (torpedo up close, wall + trident charge ftw). Can take a veteran with a few bouncers no problem, just learn to kite and use all of the attunements. Bubble and anchor for control, chains and wall for slows, Every attunement has something good. If you kite them in a circle you can take large groups down.

Heh, my problem is not that it’s not doable … it’s that “kite in a circle for awhile until they’re dead” is just a chore. It’s boring, it’s long, and it starts to be MUCH less effective in some of the areas where the undead have yanks.

It just feels slow, and really same-y. Effectively it boils down to “Drop AoE, use kiting/CCs to keep them in that area until they’re dead.”

Water attunement is actually pretty fun (and as others have said, the most effective). The rest feels like playing a staff elementalist, and I don’t much enjoy playing a staff elementalist in general.

EDIT: The thing I DO enjoy about staff play is all the combo use…but I don’t get that underwater and Evasive Arcana does nothing underwater, either, so a major trait that I love does nothing for me there. And let’s not get into the fact I’m geared mostly into condition damage …

Thieves seem to have it pretty bad underwater, too. I duo with one frequently and we usually do the underwater hearts, grab the points of interest and GTFO — which is a shame because, as I said ,the environments are gorgeous. Combat for us, though, is just not fun.

I need to find a better screenie of her other set of armor, but I happen to love this low-level set.

EDIT: Aww, heck. And a good one of her when she was still just a baby ele in genie pants. :B

They’re dropping for me in the loot bags occasionally. Been playing anywhere from Mount Maelstrom to Sparkfly Fen to Straights of Devastation, though, so I’m sorry I can’t be more specific than that.

Tanaquil.9314:

One element that you don’t include in your write up is the length of time that the karma recipe foods last for. I know, for example, that Eda’s Apple Pie lasts for an hour. FAR more than the cheaper equivalents.

Hmm, maybe that’s what’s supposed to make them desirable? I didn’t look at that, you’re right. I dunno … karma is valuable. I’m not sure a longer buff warrants the cost for me.

However, some of ’em are just plain inferior, like some of the stews. Really not seeing the point of those, and hoping those buffs are incorrect.

EDIT: @Ozymandias: Yes, but I don’t find the different items the karma recipes require are in general easier to come by than the regular recipes. Some like the apples for the apple pie are karma items themselves.

Elemental Attunement is huge. Fully specced into arcane to reduce the recharge on your attunements, you can have a pretty high uptime of protection (awesome!) and regen on your group.

There are also tons of possibilities for condition removal in your water traits, which is also very helpful.

Mister Stranger.3986:

Elementalists are GREAT underwater. It’s not all about dat deeps; the Elementalist’s underwater skills have insanely intricate crowd control. You can warp yourself or send yourself to the surface; you can send foes backwards, up, or down; you can pull yourself to foes; you can create stun fields and cripple foes…the list goes on and on.

I thought the air teleport might be some untapped potential…but if I really need to GTFO, I find I usually just teleport and aggro more mobs, which doesn’t actually help at all.

Underwater combat on an ele isn’t impossible…it’s just exceptionally tedious. I am a huge fan of the underwater environments, but I’m mostly saving those for a guardian alt so it’s not so frustrating. I feel significantly nerfed underwater.

The difference in underwater performance between the two classes is night and day.

Is there something I’m missing for the karma recipes you can buy for cooking? Many give exactly the same buff as other food, just available like 2 levels earlier.

Number in parentheses is the level you can use it at, the recipes I bought for karma are in bold.

Item A:

• Triktiki Omelette (33) | +100 condition damage for 30 seconds on kill, +40 precision
• Divinity Stuffed Mushrooms (35) | +100 condition damage for 30 seconds on kill, +40 precision

Item B:

• Beetletun Omelette | 4% magic find
• Bowl of Apple Sauce | 4% magic find
• Cinnamon Apple | 4% magic find
• Onion Ring | 4% magic find

Item C (this one is especially bad, I can get same buff 8 levels earlier with common ingredients):

• Bowl of Sauteed Carrots (5) | 20% chance might on kill
• Bowl of Simple Stirfry (5) | 20% chance might on kill
• Bowl of Ettin Stew (13) | 20% chance might on kill

Items D and E (another really bad one with the stew):

• Grilled Steak | +20 power
• Poached Egg | +20 power
• Eda’s Apple Pie (5) | +20 power
• Cold Wurm Stew (10) | +12 power

Item F:

• Griffin Egg Omelette (47) | +60 power, +50 precision
• Plate of Coriander Crusted Meat (50) | +60 power, +50 precision

ONE OTHER IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE: A few of the karma recipes I listed show a 10% XP boost vs. the flat 10 other food gives. I don’t know if this is a typo, a throwback or if this is intended to be the draw.

As it stands, I’m more than a little disappointed in my karma recipe purchases. Am I missing something?

Rainshine.5493:

I’m a bit confused…

Husband and I made the exact same choices pretty much since we joined the Order of Whispers, did storylines together, just accepting the other’s progress.

Forging the Pact bugged out on us. He initiated and I couldn’t choose to progress my story at the end. So we did it again with me initiating.

My story sends me to Shell Shock (64) as the next step. His sends him to Striking Off the Chains (64). I’m not sure we did anything to warrant different steps…?

My character: Ruse Torrent
His character: Natasya

Just an update, we’ve done 3 more story quests and our stories have wildly diverged. Intended?

I’m a bit confused…

Husband and I made the exact same choices pretty much since we joined the Order of Whispers, did storylines together, just accepting the other’s progress.

Forging the Pact bugged out on us. He initiated and I couldn’t choose to progress my story at the end. So we did it again with me initiating.

My story sends me to Shell Shock (64) as the next step. His sends him to Striking Off the Chains (64). I’m not sure we did anything to warrant different steps…?

My character: Ruse Torrent
His character: Natasya