Guild Wars 2

Don’t quite understand the fixation on aura’s. I don’t think aura’s are the answer to solve the elite spec since aura’s are relatively pretty weak (except magnetic aura). Powerful aura trait change was a nice one but that won’t change that much.

I’d rather see some tempest traits with more synergy with different weapons instead of only traits that push us on warhorn and shouts. Right now, tempest lacks diversity and purpose. Other classes have elite spec traits that offer synergy with their excisting weapons, why can’t ele have the same?

I absolutely don’t see any reason why I should run a warhorn right now, so that automatically rules out the trait line as well, and using shouts would be pointless too then. None of the current trait lines I’m using now I’d give up for tempest, be it PvP, PvE or WvW. Simply because I don’t like to handicap myself, since choosing tempest traitline feels like a half traitline or less to me.

DavyMcB.1603:

and just in case, this spec is not meant for PVP to begin with. trying to have a discussion of why it doesn’t work on that game mode is a moot point to begin with.

It’s clearly not meant for WvW either… So what is the spec meant for? Don’t tell me PvE because anything goes there.

It’s perfectly fine to talk/discuss about tempest in PvP and look at benefits and shortcomings in the hopes to improve the spec.

My take on ele is this…

2200 to 2400 armor is a good value, going full zerker is silly and dumb for the simple reason that you melt too quickly under different circumstances. Take AC fire for example, you’ll really melt under a superior AC and focus party only has to look at you to drop you down if you’re full zerker.
So that means combination of zerker with soldier is ideal since I like to balance my armor and HP instead of going high on one and low on the other.

I tend to stay away from other gear stat combinations that doesn’t have power as highest value and find zerker + soldier the easiest to combine with. I got both sets in armor and trinkets to combine.

Power => Precision. What that means is that you should ALWAYS pick power over precision if you have a choice. If you can get both, that’s great, but for example taking a food with higher power over precision instead of vice versa is better.

Force sigil => Accuracy sigil. Force sigil is a damage multiplier that works on ALL your hits, the accuracy only increases the times you crit.

Energy sigil is almost a must because you swap attunements a lot, you really benefit from this.

Strength rune is good, good alternative is pack runes.

As for traits. Fire > Air in WvW in my opinion. If you go fire, take 1 | 1 | 2 or 3 | 1 | 2. Persisting flames is not worth it simply because people don’t stay inside your lava fonts, so any extra time on your lava fonts is wasted anyway. And if you do not blast inside your fire fields you also won’t get the fury effect from this trait either. Puissance is in my opinion a better trait, pretty straightforward and really helps you get your might up, good sync with strength rune.

If you really want to go air instead of fire, go with 3 | 2 | 1. Tempest defense doesn’t work for a staff ele like you’d like it. And lightning rod is a fun trait but doesn’t work on an initial engage when your opponent knows what it’s doing (stability), so bolt to the heart is a trait that is always useful as long your target is below 50%.

arcana and water traitlines are too good to pass on in my opinion.

potent superior sharpening stone, not anything else. And for food, you can go for truffle steak or seaweed salad as good choices.

In PvP it’s personal I guess but I like to go for the celestial amulet on both staff and D/D.

In PvE, simply go full zerker. :P

Make it possible to use other weapon/utility skills (except channeling skills) while overloading. This would be a major improvement. Think it will stay balanced as well if you can’t use other channeling skills at the same time, so can’t overload while using meteor, churning or drake breath at the same time.

It should make it possible to switch attunement while overloading, quite sure people will like that and I don’t think that’s going to be OP either, but something that would make the tempest less clunky and more flowing like it should be.

Idea for a minor trait with above idea in mind:

While overloading:
Fire: your damage is increased by ##% and lingers for 5 seconds after overloading has finished.
Water: your outgoing healing is enhanced by ##% and lingers for 5 seconds after overloading has finished.
Earth: You’re you’re immune to conditions. (could clash with another trait already?) Or toughness increased by ###.
Air: You gain superspeed.

So with this trait, and the ability to use other skills while overloading you can make use of added bonus depending on the attunement you’re in and abuse that. So by going tempest traitline you can gain such a bonus at the cost of dropping another traitline. It gives you more options, for example, if you like to do more damage, you can do that but at the cost of some survivability and vice versa.

Maybe op though :P but this would give us more reasons to use overloads and keep gameplay flowy, even in more tempered form and actually make the tempest traitline viable for more different builds.

But in short, overloading becomes a lot more exciting when it would boost/enhance your weapon skills when you can use them at the same time (at cost of longer attunement cooldown). Having the overloads do the same things as now would be a bonus of course and maybe OP?, but you can get away with somewhat alright effects that way that are not too strong that won’t make it OP.

Karl McLain.5604:

Regarding Latent Stamina and Earthen Proxy: We’d like to change these up a bit, being as they don’t feel all that great and don’t have the best impact yet.

-Karl

Nice to see a lot of much needed changes so far and nice to see some of my suggestions actually making it (maybe were also suggested by others).

Not sure if you can understand my point of view and I get that tempest traitline is very much focused on melee but what I really miss with the tempest traitline right now is some level of usability and compatibility with using staff as weapon on elementalist.

To me, water and arcana is holy to me in playing my staff elementalist in WvW with fire or earth as good 3rd traitline. The tempest traitline right now can not compete with either fire or earth (obviously one is offensive and other defensive) imo for staff elementalist in WvW. It would be nice to see changes (maybe in minors) that can benefit the ele on more grounds.

The daredevil is a good example where two minors benefit any thief build. While an elementalist gets two boons for 3 and 5 seconds. Can’t say that protection is bad to have, but as a staff elementalist you don’t really want to use overload in situations where you need protection.

What I like to see and would find an interesting challange (which I’m going to think about from now on) is to think of a change to the minors to give staff ele’s a reason to be wanting to use overloads as part of their build.

Kodiak.3281:

Jski.6180:

If you could ground target with water 1 staff and soothing mist had a bigger aoe on it and if swap boons had bigger aoe on them too then yes staff is a good healing support tool but sadly this is not the way staff works. For boon and or healing builds you got to be right on-top of who you want to support. That is what going to make tempest good at support its abitly to stay with melee by its added stab from earth overloades its dagger main hand with some mobility and wh healing effect. On-top of aura heals / boons stronger def.

In wvw an ranges healer i do not think will work due to have mobility every one is and the aoe effect having very small windows of aoe. Your way better off using casters as cc and field support.

A single stack of stability is gone in literally a second in WvW. That’s a Staff’s Static Field. Soon as you run into the follow up Unyielding Earth it’s game over during overload. Oh Armor of Earth? Okay, fair enough, you can do that once every 60-75 seconds. What mobility? It gets one leap in Fire. You just keep saying random things but aren’t putting them into context. The only way Tempest will function on the front line is if it’s in a front line group and we’re still waiting to hear why you’d bring a Tempest in the limited slots. The only unique aspect a Tempest brings is Auras, and it does so at the cost of everything else, and they aren’t very good!

Also, in WvW ranged healing works fantastic because it’s all blast/field based. I can instantaneously drop a Water field on the commander tag and everyone can blast it for massive AOE healing. 4 Guardians, 3 Warriors and etc doing blast finishers on a Staff Ele’s water field is going to kick out more AOE healing than you can possibly do as an Elementalist as Staff or Tempest. This is how it has worked for literally years at this point.

See you’re looking at this like it’s a bicycle race where you’re looking at 1 person racing against others. It isn’t. It’s a freaking car race where you have access to a whole pit crew to keep you going faster than a bicycle ever could.

I have to agree with this post. Warhorn is an interesting weapon, but that’s all there is to it. Maybe there is room in pvp or roaming but in WvW zergs/raids you’re basically trying to do a job that other classes already do on the frontline, but better. Maybe you should try to play a guardian instead if you like to support and heal your allies…

I can see myself using the warhorn in PvE, just for fun. Staff is my favourite weapon so I don’t mind not having to use warhorn in WvW, but what saddens me is that the tempest traitline is very dependant of your use of the warhorn, overloads and shouts. The traitline has nothing else really to offer if you’re a staff elementalist. Gale Song is quite a decent trait I think for a staff ele in WvW, but that’s where it ends. So going tempest in WvW is simply not an option so far imo.

edit:
Also to look at the healing abilities of the tempest. Your healing is limited to 5 allies… While a waterfield from a staff elementalist is not, basically everyone in your raid can benefit from one of your waterfields (one you can neatly place where needed) by blasting it. So you can up your healing ability on your tempest, making you absolutely useless with anything else and a staff elementalist will still be more efficient.

Instead of trying to make a healing tempest, maybe look to see if you can play a different role with a tempest

Karl McLain.5604:

It currently has three pulses and heals for smaller amounts each pulse (skill facts will be visible next beta). Radius is 180, 240, 360. It’s a bit unique in that it heals all allies for the full amount, so long as they receive all three heals (the ele always receives all three).

Honestly I feel that the range is lacking. Especially the 180 is too close, so you can safely say you’ll rarely to never fully heal your allies. I understand the reasons, but it doesn’t make sense to make it almost impossible either for a full heal on an ally.

600 range would be nice but it could also be a little overkill? either way, you only heal a max of 5 persons so I don’t see anything wrong with 600 range.

I would suggest 300 / 450 / 600 ranges for the pulsed heal. In my opinion I find that balanced, those standing at over 450 range only get 1 pulse and to get a bit more healing from it, you’ll need to stand rather close to the ele using the healing skill. It gives a possible max heal without making it too difficult to get.

While playing in this event the first thing I thought was how dumbminded it really is, and how bad it is designed since it motivates players to just hit and run without seeing anything through in order to get the maximum reward. It came to me rather quickly what the best “tactic” was to even have a chance to reach 20+ stack buff before the timer was up.

So I decided to mostly make a minimum required amount of input in each event before heading out for the next. Sometimes when I saw it went quickly enough I would stick around until it was done. I was solo’ing without party though but I managed to get rewarded for pretty much each event. The 3rd map I did I managed to do it fast and got to 21 stack just in time so it really motivates players to use this tactic to get the maximum out of the event.

Other downsides which make this event badly designed is how you’re pressured into making it to events on time, and pressured to deal enough damage to even get rewarded for it.

I noticed that a lot of people are somehow pulled together in one big zerg and especially without a party (or even with party it’s difficult enough) there is big chance you won’t even get a hit of or deal enough damage to a single mob to be rewarded for the events it runs through. Personally I just went my own way and usually got there before the big masses did.

It’s absolutely not new player friendly, like someone else already has explained, the rewarding system is not useful for them at all, nor is it an event from which I think ANET can really impress the newer players. It’s more anti advertisement if you’d ask me.

For veterans the challenge is not there, and for most it’s simply a dumbminding grind.

Everyone who participates in this event from beginning to end should be rewarded equally, and should not be based on how much you were able to leech from events.

To make the rewarding more fair, the only thing I can think of right now is to make a public map event split into phases in which each player gets rewarded for each phase they contribute in. And have the contribution total of all players together per map overflow decide how much the reward is going to be which should always be based on the amount of players on a map as well. A map with 100 players getting 100% more contribution compared to a group of 50 players bringing the same individual effort would be unfair as well.

Going with a support spec for tempest was a good idea from arenanet. Making it frontline however was a really bad idea….

Main problem is that the weapon, overloads and shouts make the spec a frontline melee class which they are not suited for in many game modes. Add to this that the traitline is quite underwhelming as well and doesn’t offer any extra real damage mitigation and focuses too much on overload and warhorn usage, making it almost absolute for any other weapon use.

Haven’t tested tempest in pvp yet, but I can imagine that D/D meta is still more viable. D/D in general has more mobility, more survivability by using cantrips without the worry of overloading and locking you out of an attunement.

In PvE anything can work, and when people enjoy tempest with warhorn I’d say play it. But that doesn’t take away the fact that tempest is less viable over the normal elementalist in PvP and WvW.

Right now the only “possible” build I could think of for WvW is this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMMAdOgVOA+XCsSglTAz9rWWbrETgAwCooEMA/AA-TFSBAB0s/QWK9OTJIlq/clyA80BoxDAAgLAApA0TZE-w

Gale Song: Reliable stun breaker with not a bad cooldown at all. Seems more reliable over tempest defense. It basically provides an immediate stun breaker when you’re stunned or whatever, and because of the trait tempestous aria it should give weakness to someone near you. So can work nicely against thiefs or warriors and such trying to spike you.

Then in grandmaster the only trait that can be somewhat useful is lucid singularity. Can use overload in fire before a fight to get some quick might. Or after using #5 in water you can get an extra heal by overloading water. But that’s about it…

Using a shout skill instead of icebow. Fire shout can be used quite often and does “some” damage. Again somewhat useful incase you’re spiked or targeted.

All in all, not worth it, and better of going with fire or earth traitline over tempest IMO.

I would like to know more about what people think about their WvW server community, how do you compare it with other servers. Do you enjoy it? or find it non existant? Do you think your server has the best community and why?

I’m asking because instead of looking for the right guild, I think with WvW it is also important to know more about the server you join incase someone is looking to transfer (like me :P).

Just doing yellow hearts combined with dynamic events makes you level relatively quick and easy. And don’t skip on personal story either, it gives you decent experience in between.

Get rid of tiers all together. Make matchups each week completely random so eventually the current tier 1 servers will de-stack out of boredom into lower populated servers. Make transfering free for a month, guaranteed that many guilds/players will make use of it.

If only NA + EU servers weren’t seperate like now, it would also solve the entire coverage problem making coverage actually much easier around all servers and thus more balanced. You’ll always have balance problems, but I don’t quite understand how anet could have even thought about seperating NA and EU servers in the beginning when you know that WvW gamemode needs 24/7 attention. They possibly can’t go back with this and make NA + EU join and compete eachother anymore?

It would also solve the issue of having NA and EU players being able to play together and not having to be on a specific NA or EU server for it.

Is there a specific time (like once a week) when the server population update takes place? And when a server hits “very high” how long can it take before it bounces back to full? Sorry if it’s a stupid question :P

And I wonder if hardcapping servers is the right way to go. Surely you get possibly movement from full or very high servers to lesser populated servers. But that won’t solve the unbalanced problem at all I think.

If I take myself as an example, right now I am on a full server (desolation) and i’m active during euro primetime which is also the busiest time on deso. I am waiting until I can transfer to one of the NA T1 servers (got friends on NA and t1 is the only place with euro presense in WvW). But obviously I can’t, nor will I pick a server where there is no presence during EU timezone (which is everything pretty much below t1). So right now, I am staying on a full server as a dead weight in a full timezone while I can move away to another tier 1 server where the EU timezone is not full.

In the meanwhile, movement from guilds active during a servers primetime, for example euro guilds on EU servers and NA guilds on NA servers don’t really change much to the balance in primetime, nor will WvW guilds move to a dead WvW server.

I can imagine that the current situation keeps a lot of people from making a move in the first place instead of moving to lower tiers. Which results in very little changes to population right now and possible huge overstacking servers when players come back for HoT.

edit: If anet really wanted to do something about balancing servers (and unstacking the full ones), they should start out by lowering the costs to transfer and even lower it to 0 gems for the medium sized ones and below (if that exists). Very high should stay at 1800 gems or maybe make that even higher to prevent servers to get full too quickly again.

Can’t say these changes are a bad thing. But if you’re a european WvW player wanting to play in NA for x reasons, you won’t really be able to make that move. Tier 1 is possibly the only tier where there is proper euro WvW activity and guilds that play those timezones and can’t say they are over populated yet.

So in a way it makes sense that it looks at the WvW population, but it doesn’t look at the specific timezone activity and how that matches with a specific player’s timezone activity.

1. Tempest (Overall): 3

2. Traits: 3

3. Warhorn: 2

4. Overloads: 2

5. Healing Skill: 5

6. Utilities: 3

7. Elite Skill: 1

8. Animations & sound effects: 4

Another thing I like to add on Water Globe (Warhorn skill 5 in water).

The speed in which the field travels, should be based on your char’s speed. With swiftness, the field is too slow. So with swiftness active, the skill should detect it, and have the field travel faster. Else it’s pretty useless.

A couple things that could be added/changed in my opinion.
Speaking from World vs World point of view mostly.

What devs need to take in mind is that the gamemode they want to create on tempest goes at the heavy cost of damage since we need to mitigate damage as well with the squishuist class in the game (lowest armor and lowest HP) That means the things we can do in return should be awarded accordingly, meaning better healing and better support/CC on frontline.

Some suggestions I have so far:

Sand Squall (warhorn skill): Make this a blast finisher.
Warhorn does not add any blast finishers, so with dagger we only have 1 so far. A blast finisher in earth would be incredibly helpful to make the spec work.
Also, I rather have the blast finisher on sand squall than on the earth overload if it would be too much on both. That way it’s easier to manage your blast finish in the position you want it to be. With overload earth it’s too hard to make your blast go off at the spot and time when you need it to go off. WvW has a lot of fields going on, and you want to make sure you blast the right field at the right time.

Water Glove: Field too small
It’s a nice waterfield, very creative. But since it’s a moving one, I think the field should be a bit bigger (240 radius instead of 180).

Lightning Orb: Travels too far, too fast
Make it shorter ranged and less faster traveling. Since you’re pretty much stuck in frontline combat, you don’t want to see your orb moving off right away. Right now it does too little damage.

Dust Storm: Radius too small
The radius of 180 is too small on this skill. Should be 240.

Overload Air: This one is a joke.
The vulnerability effect is laughable with this skill. It’s not only easy to avoid since the radius is small, but in general 1 or 2 stacks of this is not worth using it. If it could be completely changed and instead or have it added with the daze or stun effect on impact (1 second). That would make the overload worth using.

Overload Fire: Radius is terrible.
Skill looks fun, but the actual effect is not threatening at all. Does mediocre to low damage and you need to be practically standing on someone to make it hurt somewhat. Nobody is going to stand still on your fire tornado either. If the radius was bigger (360) it could maybe have some meaning in bigger battles.

Overload earth: Seems to be at a good place
Only the blast finisher is too unreliable with this skill. Either add an extra finisher on sand squall, or move this one to sand squall instead.

Overload water: Seems fine so far.

Eye of the Storm: Lackluster, is missing something.
Maybe be consistent and add the shock aura for this shout? Would make this a proper shout to use. The speed isn’t very strong and not exactly noticable compared to swiftness.

Elemental Bastion: Needs a tad bit higher heal on aura’s.
The healing power is scaling very badly with any skills and having this heal between 700 and 750 is just a bit too low. Maybe make it around 1000 -1200 to make it more worthwhile and have an impact on the battlefield.

Imbued Melodies: Add something else to it.
Perhaps shorter cooldown for warhorn skills on this trait? Or make it give stability as well next to break stun.

Speedy Conduit: No need for this.
Lack of creativity here it seems. We don’t need extra swiftness from overload. Others most likely provide us with enough swiftness so this minor is a waste for the tempest.
Replace this minor with Earthen Proxy, and add a new master trait that gives heal on using shouts.

Not sure where to post.

But seems I found a bug. Without the trait powerful aura, the aura frost aura duration from flash freeze lasts 5 seconds, with powerful aura, it is increased to 10 seconds. Shouts already share aura’s so in this case duration is doubled with the trait. However on the shout, “shock and aftershock” the duration on the magnetic aura is not doubled like it did with frost aura on flash freeze shout when activating the powerful aura trait.

No idea how the shouts are supposed to work with powerful aura, but doesn’t seem to be the same mechanics, so one of them are wrong.

nearlight.3064:

Its because people can’t adapt very easily. When the idealized image in their mind falls apart, they can’t adapt to changes as easily as they should be able to.

Have to disagree.

First of all, the official GW2 forum has been known (to me at least) as a heaven for whiners. Only reason I come here is to get myself informed (which this forum most of the time fails to do) and if that won’t happen I’ll just troll since whiners are easy and ungrateful.

Anyways, reason I disagree is that not much changes has happened to the ele thus far besides some minor changes. The new specialization is a huge (optional) change that like for any class is a very welcome change that people were waiting for. The problem here lies with the fact that people had “expectations”. They were seeing their ele swinging a sword around already, and seeing the pretty skins for sword, I can imagine that the average and below PvE only bloke gets excited by that prospect.

Now their expectations got shattered when they see that ele won’t get a cool sword to wield… Instead they get a warhorn which they compare with the warhorn on the other classes right now without knowing what ele WH is going to be like. Some people are even trying to make up reasons for needing a sword… melee weapon LOL as if you can’t melee with a dagger or staff. I agree that warhorn skins aren’t as pretty as the sword skins, but we have no idea how the elite specialization is going to work with WH.

Also I wouldn’t compare the warhorn skills from ranger/warrior/necro with the warhorn from an elite specialization…

Looks like you guys couldn’t wait to blow that warhorn

Autumn.8043:

Why do people keep comparing Sword to Dagger? Dagger is not a true Melee weapon, it has 300-600 range skills and no real auto attack chain, it’s not the same! Yes it’s close(ish) range but it doesn’t make it a melee weapon, I’d class it more as a close/medium range caster weapon.

I imagine sword being more 130 range with auto attack chains, that is a melee weapon.

Doesn’t really matter since it seems Warhorn is rather likely, just getting tired of reading “We already have a melee weapon, we don’t need another (sword)”.

What are you on about? dagger is a short ranged weapon (most skills between 240-400 range) that brings a lot of mobility. The mobility is needed to make our short ranged gameplay viable. Bringing in another short ranged mainhand weapon would be stupid and won’t add anything to the game. Especially if you make the range even shorter. We’re no tank.

I’d rather see a good alternative to using staff in raids/WvW. That means a weapon with large group content usability and long range, preferebly 1200. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a warhorn getting 1200 range.

I’m pretty excited about the idea of using a warhorn on elementalist. Just imagine calling the storms with your warhorn, and depending on your attunement you get to use a high DPS skill or some other utility skill giving out some sort of condition or ally buff. Just like all weapons on ele give a range of different types of skills.

Why does ele need an auto attack chain skill for DPS? This is not hellokitty online where things are made easy enough where mashing the #1 key is enough to go through your content. Go play axe warrior instead?

Lauriewonnacott.9841:

I just want to point out (again) that the argument about Swords similarities to Dagger is totally totally unfair, as Warhorn is even more similar to Focus. Warhorn is the dumbest weapon in the game, and I think Arenanet want to conveniently forget that. I know there’s the odd Warhorn lover out there, but we have to look at it realistically. A Focus is basically an object that is not a traditional weapon, but can be used as the FOCUS of magical power to perform some sort of offensive or defensive magical spell. If you look at the Focus skills on Elementalist now it even already has a clearly stormy reflect zone. Consider thematically what a Warhorn is once you put it into the hands of an Elementalist – it literally IS a Focus. Sure, maybe Arenanet think they’re being real crafty by making a Warhorn call storms rather that a Sword, because if they don’t take that chance it’s unlikely Warhorn will ever thematically fit a future Ele Elite Spec, but is the thematic link between storms and warhorn really worth continuing to endorse the ugliest weapon in the game by giving it to the class that will likely get the least out of it in terms of actual playstyle, ie. what every Ele I’ve met cares most about? Based on every discussion I’ve been a part of, the response from players to the concept of a Warhorn Elementalist is dramatically negative, and considerably more so than the response to any other elite spec thus far. There’s really no burst damage Elementalist build worth speaking of in Conquest, and a main hand weapon would make significantly more sense to fulfill that role. In PvE, there’s really no reasonable tanky role for an Elementalist, and the potential for Sword or Warhorn to fulfill that role is pretty equal (although focus already has 2 reflects and an amazing total invulnerablity skill that fit that role fine). The problem is that ultimately we know so little about the way either would work that to say that one weapon would have a bigger impact on playstyle changes than another isn’t really fair. There is only one true speculation we can make, and that is that it has very clearly always been the intent of Arenanet that your main hand weapon choice has a heavier impact on playstyle than your offhand weapon choice, particularly when we consider that most of the damage a player does comes from the main hand, and off hand choice doesn’t effect the Ele’s 3rd skill. If they want to really make any difference to the way Ele plays, it HAS to be a main hand weapon or a two handed weapon, as Elementalist has 1 less option for main or two handed weapon than any other class in the game with the exception of Engineer, and Engi can take 5 kits and not have to plan nearly as much to use them as we do to use our conjures, all of which pretty much suck in sPvP.

TLDR

It’s impressive someone can write so many words about a spec we don’t know anything about.

Laraley.7695:

Retsuko.2035:

The reactions here is proof how much people in general care so much about appearance over mechanics and skill workings. You want to swing a sword as an ele? well… too bad.

There’s absolutely no information available about how the warhorn would work or what kind of skills it will have. So why are people QQ’ing already?

I don’t dislike the idea of a warhorn.

it’s been sad several times that ele needs a mainhand or twohand weapon rather than offhand, it brings very little diversity to the class. How is that connected with looks? Warhorn is usually a support weapon and ele doesn’t need that either. Would be cool if there was actually a viable dps spec for ele for once, but that’s not going to happen with a warhorn. And people actually care about the mechanics, that’s why they don’t want warhorn. The reason people would like warhorn were usually like ‘’It would be so cool’’ and ‘’I can use my Howler’’, so please restrain yourself from statements like this.

Doesn’t change the fact that you have absolutely no idea what warhorn would give, other then an assumption of it being support.

Maybe tempest will change the entire way dagger or scepter mainhand would work beside getting warhorn. So far, all elite specs shown us it’s not just a new weapon.

Also there is just as much lack of offhand as mainhand skills right now. Seeing how dagger/scepter are in a strong position, while dagger and offhand are not makes more sense to see a new offhand rather then new mainhand.

The reactions here is proof how much people in general care so much about appearance over mechanics and skill workings. You want to swing a sword as an ele? well… too bad.

There’s absolutely no information available about how the warhorn would work or what kind of skills it will have. So why are people QQ’ing already?

I don’t dislike the idea of a warhorn.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s going to be warhorn instead of a sword. Warhorn can create sound waves, which creates wind. Definition of “Tempest” has a lot to do with wind and storms. Even the warhorn skin OP posted shows a windy skin. So…..

Sword wouldn’t add much new if it’s short range. Dagger is short range and why make the squishiest class fight even more in short range. Warhorn can be long range.

Hi,

I’m requesting some information from anyone who has experienced this trait (blinding ashes) in WvW or other gamemodes. Would like to hear your experiences and opinion on it. Curious to know about it’s effectivity together with other traits like burning precision etc after the trait changes.

Thanks.

Dennis.3068:

I really dont think so. We will still be able to use our other Weapons inside the new specialization. Otherwise Mesmers would run arround with only 2 weaponskills^^ so why not the other way arround. Also there are swordskills for all 4 attunements. And the devs said, they are gonna change the way the F1-F4 skills work.
But yeah, perhaps we use the sword only in the specialization, but i dont think so

Give Sources before claiming something you might have heard sometime once upon a day.

Anyways, it really does seem like the new weapon will function just the way any weapon is used with our 4 attunements. However most of them are still placeholders, with copypasted dagger mainhand skills.

What’s new so far is the #1 skill, having a chain to it with either 210 or 250 range. The #2 and #3 skills are the placeholders still to be filled in. Not all #1 chain skills are done though it seems?

Interesting one to me is the flame slash chain skill (#1 on fire attunement most likely) giving endurance on each succesful strike.

Juken.5391:

Hey folks. I’m a returning player and seeing the buffs they gave to the ranger decided to switch things up and possibly main an elementalist come next expansion.

In any case I have a few questions so I can plan my elementalist out and clarify some confusion I might have about them.

1. The Good

What makes you want to play your elementalist? When I ask people in my guild they usually respond with “I haven’t logged into him/her for awhile.” I would think conjures would be the main selling point but what makes you play as an Elementalist?

2. The Bad

What are the worst aspects class I have to accept? I mained a ranger while they were still relatively tame and I made it work. I didn’t mind the lower coefficients on skills and the micro the pet had. Now, what do I have to learn to get good with an ele?

3. The Build

I am thinking of making this character be able to do all content. Is dagger/focus fine for that (with a little staff on the side?) I know I am going to have her use celestial accessories but what of the runes/armor? Is it really fine to go full celestial or is the class more focused on damage to the point that I should mix it with some berserker/soldier? Divinity runes?

1. The Good

Ele’s are very versatile and can do good in any content and we’re needed and wanted in anything. The gameplay is very active, you need to actively play the class to get the most out of it instead of just spamming your 1 key. It takes skill to play well, but once you master it, it’s very rewarding.

Conjure isn’t exactly a sell point imo. I like ice bow in dungeons and WvW as fast bomb, but that’s it.

2. The Bad

Accept that ele’s have the lowest HP pool in the game, and together with light armor it makes us the squishiest class. HOWEVER, a Dagger/Dagger ele running celestial in PvP is very good at staying alive. When it comes to Staff elementalist it gets to be a story about knowing how to position. I’ve learned that it doesn’t really matter if you go soldier or zerker as long you know how to move and position yourself in a big battle you’ll stay alive. Again, Ele is not the easiest class to play but once you master the ele it’s very rewarding. Most ele’s (me included) play exclusively elementalist, might be a reason for it

3. The build.

Dagger/Focus is viable, but not ideal in my opinion. It’s situational though, focus has amazing survivability skills especially against ranged classes. But it’s mostly a duel weapon choice.

Dagger/dagger is very fun and more a team fighter build with more burst ability. In PvP, running celestial is almost a must. With healing signet and the healing power you got really good sustain with massive healing and condition cleansing and still enough damage to matter in team fights. Your mobility is top notch and best class to get away from danger. The ability to close in on ranged is very good as well. D/D ele celestial in WvW roaming is also viable. With D/D ele, learn might stacking.

Staff elementalist with celestial works in PvP, but not recommended unless you master staff very well. It’s very situational and it can destroy if you get the room for it. If your team in PvP sucks, i can assure you, there won’t be much room to play a staff ele.

In WvW zerg play (15-xx people) it’s a very fun and strong weapon. Staff ele’s are a must in an organized zerg to supply water fields. We also have other skills that matter like static, ice field, unsteady ground, shockwave, lightning surge, gust etc. Fire 4 is one of your best friends. A mix of soldier armor(pack/strength rune) with zerker trinkets is advised. Or go full zerker if you know how to play well.

new weapons: sword and possibly torch or warhorn?

Sword:
First defensive weapon for the ele, geared with skills giving the user more utility and access to party healing.

Torch/warhorn:
Skills mostly geared towards adding fields for combo’s and blast finishers.

That’s my guesses. I could be completely wrong, but wouldn’t be surpriced to see anet give it such a twist.

Gorefiend.9675:

Staff Ele in WvW is fantastic fun. I very much enjoy my 0/5/0/5/4 damage spec. For the love of god please do not go 6 into arcane for evasive arcane as staff, complete waste of a trait.

Dodging in water attunement to heal and cleanse conditions on you and a few allies is a complete waste, and when we lay down a big water field, change to earth attunement, put an eruption down inside the water field (will make it blast) and then dodge roll in to the water field for another blast finisher inside the water field while the blast also immobilizes nearby enemies is also a complete waste.
So basically with evasive arcana, 2 heals for you and allies, a condition cleanse for you and allies , an immobilize and a blind are a waste of a trait?

Why are there so many bad staff ele’s on this forum?

Just wanted to be the first to say it :P

Why is he General Morgahn?
When looking at the cutscene we see this myserious figure looking over the battlefield. He’s clearly not a centaur, and by the looks of his weapons, it should be a spear and shield. Paragon’s wield these weapons…. Now why was someone randomly watching the battle from over there? in the middle of the jungle?

Can only think of one character who has been observing everything from a distance without interfering with anything.

Anet has told us that E is someone we all know. So since this fellow is a paragon, i decided to look for paragons in guild wars 1. Now i stumbled on one of our hero npc’s called General Morgahn, who we got as paragon hero.

I’m sure people will now say, wait a minute, General Morgahn should be long ded already. Perhaps :P

Finally on the wiki page for morgahn:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/General_Morgahn
You can read at the very bottom under Trivia, that morgahn’s appearance and vocal performance is very similar to that of Samuel E. Wright.

Very much a coincedence probably, but who knows
I’ve said it first (I think).

Mounts to make us travel faster is not what this game needs at all. So many other things anet should prioritize over features for lazy people :P

Mine do….

But seriously, I think it’s a shame that our mini pets are standing so far from our characters. Most of the time, and especially in crowded places, it doesn’t even look like the mini pet belongs to you, but to someone else.

Mini pets should be following or standing much closer to us and much more obvious, and not act as if they don’t belong to us

Been having major spike issues and often DC from the game and normally i don’t have this problem. I’m on desolation.

A bit late into this topic. Tried to read some of it. And sorry if I’m posting more than i should. Would like to voice my ideas on this topic after reading some suggestions. And sorry for mentioning alliances.

The Village and the House
My idea is a village or town, on a floating island within the mists. A village or town is made up by the people that inhabits the place, just like a guild is made by the members. So a member who is part of a guild will have its house physically projected at a certain spot within the village, with an access portal/door to enter.

Each individual player is responsible for their own house. Everyone has the same possibilities for their house available. This housing system within a guild/alliance village permits the owner of a house to move from one guild to another without losing their house and it’s properties within that house. Instead their house will be placed in another village of the guild/alliance they have joined.

Village Progression
Of course there should be ways to progress your guild/alliance village or your own house. First of all, it should be possible to progress your village through all types of game play. PvE, WvW and PvP. Some should have higher or more prestige than others. Guild/Alliance specific activities should be better rewarded in such a way so that skill will overcome numbers. Reward tracks for specific content like we now have for PvP could be used.

House Progression
Your achievement points should be reflected by your house. So the more points you have the more ways you can decorate or customize your house. Within guild wars 1, the hall of monuments was a popular place that showcased your achievements, and I had friends who were happy to show me their hall of monuments because they were proud of what they achieved. It would be nice if our own house could somehow reflect our achievements like the hall of monument did. Of course our own house should be more interesting compared to a simple hall and should have more purpose. Beside the achievement points it should be possible to customize certain things with gems or gold.

Features
I’m pretty bad with making up features, but here are some examples, starting with my most wanted one. But surely others have given plenty good ideas on features.

• GvG
  A new type of PvP should be introduced. One that I know many would wish for, even without guild halls being introduced. This is GvG in an organized PvP content type. A seperate leaderboard for the best guild/alliance can be created. And a separate reward track that reflects the success of your guild/alliance and translates into prestige rewards for your guild/alliance village. GvG, 20vs20. This type of content is probably for another discussion however. But my idea of GvG objectives can range from a battle royale or as a capture the flag with use of siege and limited supply.

• Pvp Arena
  Having access to your guild/alliance arena from within the village (of course same concept and purchase as within PvP now)

• Guild Missions
  Somehow guild missions should be part of both progression but also as new content within this village with a certain event (i.e. your village is attacked by steam creatures).

• Bonuses
  Benefits should be given for owning a village. So every member of that village has the same access to the bonuses it gives. An example of what I’d love to see is that you can farm certain plants within your house. Every house owner can farm their own crops, depending on how many and which kinds will depend on the guild/alliance village your house is part of. Or have a communal/shared farming ground within the village, shared mine and a shared tree yard.

Merging / Alliance
It should be possible for any guild to merge their “village” with another. This would solve the problem of small guilds falling behind. The guild with the most progression made will be the one you can move to. Merging to a village with less progression wouldn’t make sense. This merge enables an alliance between the guilds that are part of the same village (Mist Alliance).

With a “Mist Alliance” you can make guild missions broader, and do them with the alliance so it’s easier for smaller guilds to participate in every guild specific activity as alliance activity.

Multiple guilds
Of course, some people are part of several guilds. So how will it decide which village you enter? The guild you represent is the village you’ll enter. You won’t be able to change guilds within the village. Also the benefits you gain from one village, will not be accessible if the same or lesser benefits are available in another village you have access to for that same period of time those benefits are available. Your house will always remain the same one no matter in which village you are with your house.

Was wondering why ArenaNet is not using an online ingame survey once in a while?
Forums only cover about 5% of the playerbase and even less than 1% when it comes to CDI (guessed estimates), and shouldn’t be reliable enough to poll to see what the majority thinks or wants.

Just a question… although perhaps a stupid one, but wondering what people think about kasmeer’s ability to see whether someone speaks the truth or not, having something to do with the gift of true sight?
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gift_of_True_Sight
Although the purpose of gift of true sight was different, but not sure if it had any other effects other then seeing the mursaat and other spiritual beings.

Maybe the “wyld hunt” is basically the same as any other dragon minion undergoes. But since they grow from a free willed friendly pale tree who protects her offspring from mordy corruption, the sylvari’s wyld hunts are quite different from other dragon minions?

And maybe the first born are closest to being ventari or ronan?

I think the vision we saw, and what the pale tree wanted to share with us, is the will of mordremoth. This would be viable if the pale tree is connected to mordremoth, since the will of an Elder Dragon is shared with it’s minions.

Another possibility is that the Pale Tree showed us a prophecy of what could happen. Like she did before when she sent us with trahearne into Orr before even reaching Orr where we saw visions of what might come to be.

Interesting stuff in the cutscene, first you see the trees, which starts out with the pale tree’s face. But once you get to the fun part, you see objects rising into the sky, going beyond the clouds. And there are yellow beams of light next to these objects, and once that happens, you see the yellow oval object suddenly appearing in the middle of such beam pillar and dropping down on which crystals go into shambles. The oval object might be an egg from glint… Added picture of one of glint’s eggs from gw1. There were many of these eggs… So who knows how many children have made it.

But how can an egg suddenly appear in the middle of that pillar like beam?

Who is making the large objects float? And doesn’t it look a lot like the mists?

For those who played gw1, and remember glint’s challenge where we have to protect the baby dragon from destroyers. Does anyone know why those destroyers attacked the baby in the first place? Was it just a random made up event by the devs, or is there actual lore behind primordus minions attacking a baby dragon all the way somewhere in the crystal desert?
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Glint%27s_Challenge

I also mostly share the same opinion when it comes mordremoth and the sylvari being a lot more connected.

What i posted in march.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Sylvari-s-Corruption-Theory-spoilers

I also believe there’s a connection with kralkatorrik and glint within the living story. The zephyrites play an important role in it. Also the vision of the pale tree (i think it’s a vision) is trying to tell us what mordremoth wants, his intentions or will. How can the pale tree show us mordy’s will? because the will of the elder dragon lives within his minion. Very speculative i know, but it sort of makes sense. And the way the crystals are devoured by the vines in that cutscene, really fits with the zephyrites being targeted by Aerin. No idea what the idea is behind targeting the zephyrites or glint’s legacy by mordremoth though. Maybe it has something to do with the free will gained by Glint and passed on to her offspring.

I still believe that creatures/minions made/produced/corrupted by an elder dragon (or it’s champions) can not be corrupted by another elder dragon. Ever seen a Risen Branded? or a Branded Svanir? Or a Mordrem Destroyer?

draxynnic.3719:

All that said, I’m personally not convinced either – but it holds up better than some theories around here.

Not really.
I like the theory on anise being livia. But there’s just no single similarity or hint that Anise is livia. IMO I think that the cat “Shadow” is more likely to be livia than anise.

Mr E, even though marjory didn’t feel as if that person was a necromancer, it did use necromancer looking magic though. If livia is still around, she would be E i think.

xoz.2481:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

With this note, I’m looking forward to the Mordrem Charr/Human/Asura/Norn that are corrupted Pact members after they’ve been killed and affected by a parasitic flower. And it makes me wonder if Mordremoth can make a flower that would dig into the flesh of living beings to control their body like a marionette. That’d make for a very creepy encounter, where someone you’ve been working with for a long time is suddenly having a flower on his/her shoulder, its roots digging into the flesh down the limbs to control them, enforcing the victim to be aware of all the actions they perform while being unable to do anything, perhaps while also enwrapping the heart to present the ultimatum: “fight against my control and you will die and I’ll use your corpse anyways.”

Well this guy has been just hanging here for over a month without the slightest sign of Mordremoth’s corruption.

Well preserved tooafter a month
Anyways, wouldnt it make sense if each dragon can only corrupt a certain being or element. For example, zhaitan corrupted the death (dont ask me about sylvari here) into risen, mordremoth might only be able to corrupt flora? Primordus can only corrupt things from rock and lava?

Jormag and kralkatorrik can corrupt living creatures though.

The pale tree was a key to a better understanding about tyria and the dragons. Would think that the person/creature/whatever who set up the attack on the grove did this with the intention of preventing us to get a better understanding about the world and the eternal alchemy. Question is, who would benefit from it, and why.

Also who would benefit from assaulting all the leaders of tyria? White Mantle? inquest?

Countess Anise being Gwen is a possibility?

And who is this cat Shadow, who’s now over 30 years old. Another illusion?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Despite this, I still say that there’s ever more likelihood of the sylvari on a whole not being Mordremoth’s minions, since well, if they were his minions then they’d already be corrupted, but the Pale Tree says she has been preventing his corruption.

IMO, the fact we see the thorned wolf as mordremoth minion, doesn’t mean anything, except that the theory on sylvari being minions of mordremoth is still possible.

Possibly, anything that is a plant or tree can be corrupted by mordy though?

I’ve wrote up my theory before on sylvari being minions (i can still be wrong), and one of the big reasons why people didn’t agree was how they couldn’t be corrupted. It’s already stated now, sylvari can be corrupted by mordemoth. So if one dragon can’t corrupt another dragon’s minions (zhaitan couldn’t corrupt sylvari), it could be even more viable (and could explain the blue orb at fort trinity)?

As for the attack of one of mordy’s champions on the pale tree. They said it must have been lured there somehow. Is it possible that maybe one of the leaders could have something “magical” that would attract them?

As for the overgrown. It simply means it’s grown larger or wilder, don’t think it’s anything to do with them being different from mordrem mobs, but calling it “Veteran Overgrown Mordrem Husk” would probably be a little too long?

Anise being the same person as salma is aninteresting idea. As for jennah, who are her parents ? The family tree doesnt show how she connects with the royal family. What if anise is the actual queen, and jennah is an illusion?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tyrian_royalty_family_tree

Anise is always staying close to jennah afterall… Since birth.

Mental Paradox.3845:

No. The center is the Pale Tree, the green orb smashing into it is Mordremoth killing the Pale Tree.

We know this because Scarlet saw the same thing.

Scarlet called it the “workings of the universe”. Not the “mordremoth kills pale tree prediction”.
Of course my theory can be totally wrong and i missed information.

But as far as the lore tells us, there is more than one pale tree, one who doesn’t share the same dream of dreams as the pale tree we know. Scarlet should have known this since it’s in general known, but of course it bugs me when it’s taken for granted that the tree is supposed to be the pale tree according to scarlet, marjory or your character.

http://www.crystalinks.com/yggdrasil.jpg

That’s called an axis mundi. Common among Animism. It’s how many cultures picture their world view and how their present world connects with the netherworld or other worlds.

Remember, there is more than just tyria and the dragons, we also have the mists. Shouldn’t the mists have a place in the eternal alchemy?

BrunoBRS.5178:

it’s a circle. of course it’ll look “similar”.

Only it’s not about the circle…

Like i’ve said it’s far fetched, but if you look inside the circle, and see the pattern, and how it matches with the hexagon street pattern. The bloodstone inscription image looks even more alike.

Also the infinite coil reactor has the same hexagon pattern, as the street pattern in divinity’s reach and the bloodstone inscription.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infinite_Coil_Reactor

Whether it’s on purpose or not, i don’t know. It could be total coincedence, but it’s fun speculating :P