Guild Wars 2

cheese.4739:

EDIT: oh aye, though you missed one thing from your list: S-booning. It’s like three steps worse than nerfing and I find it hilarious for some reason.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter's_Boon_

oh god, don’t get me started on that. i also didn’t mention “Kilroy Stonekin”, although i would love this to be an elite that all classes can use. that or Anet changes everyone’s profession to Commando for April fools every year

cheese.4739:

<<I removed a bunch of other relevant stuff from this quote, this is just to save space and keep the page readable rather than to ignore it.>>

ok, my standpoint was from WvW, not PvP. i should have stated that to begin with. i know how important a second can be in PvP since it literally is the difference between life and death. and i can definitely appreciate they didn’t have a knee-jerk reaction and make something OP just to be nerfed a moment later

but from my perspective, in WvW, everything feels pretty much the same apart from gust/meteor/rain. obviously this is because it’s not PvP, where i’d have to defend a point by myself at times or be the main target of a burst. i can’t comment much on PvP much since i don’t play that any more, but i do agree with you that it was an improvement that was needed

below is my interpretation of buff/fix/etc.

OP – too powerful for what it should be
buff – abilities have improved to the point where change is very noticeable and makes it more viable for use or allows greater variety
fix – improvement from before. noticeable, but does not change much to what is currently available and does not change gameplay greatly. skill works as how it was intended
<no change to skills>
fix – a skill was a bit too powerful for what it is or where it was, but still viable and works how it should
nerf/UP – skill or ability was reduced to the point where there is little to no reason to have, other than in extremely situational areas if at all

so in this interpretation, from your perspective in PvP, this update is a buff. the change is very noticeable and staff users can do more in the same amount of time. but in my perspective in WvW, not much has changed for me to notice apart from the 3 skills i mentioned earlier

aka everyone’s a winner we all get a free car woo

just to make things clear, i’m only speaking generally about the staff. i’m not saying if it’s good or bad in sPvP/tPvP/etc.

i’m not saying the staff was nerfed, but i’m not saying it was buffed

what i am saying is the following:
“why couldn’t we get this update a few months ago? shouldn’t we have already had this?”

darkace.8925:

SilverUniverse.7103:

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

i play almost exclusively to staff. all those aftercast cooldowns were not buffs. they were improvements to our quality of life, but not buffs. reducing the aftercast down by 0.1-0.6 seconds is not a buff

How is the ability to chain skills together quicker not a buff?

SilverUniverse.7103:

these are buffs
- gust passing through multiple enemies
- meteor shower cast time decreased
- moving while casting healing rain

You conveniently forgot:
– Eruption cast time decreased
– Unsteady Ground duration increased
– Lava Font cast time decreased
– Geyser cast time decreased
– Frozen Ground cast time decreased

SilverUniverse.7103:

do bear in mind that gust deals no damage, so if someone has stability up then you effectively do nothing, they don’t even enter combat.

And if Lightning Surge deals 100 billion damage and it’s dodged or blocked you effectively do nothing. I fail to see what bearing Gust doing no damage has to do with anything.

SilverUniverse.7103:

each meteor hits for an area the size of a non-blasting staff lava font or geyser (or lightning flash), while randomly distributed over a radius of 360

Okay?

SilverUniverse.7103:

moving while casting healing rain was the only good thing for a skill that is already good

For the sake of argument let’s say you’re right. Let’s say the only buff to staff was the ability to move while casting Healing Rain. Were there any nerfs to staff? The answer is no. And if the answer is no, then the staff was buffed. And if the staff was buffed, then assertion that Anet only balances through nerfs is a false statement.

i still feel the update to staff was more of a ‘fix’ or at least “this is what we should have had in the first place”, since we should have been throwing down skills in a timely manner to begin with, as opposed to living with casting a single skill, brewing a cup of tea, then casting the next

and no, i did not ‘conveniently’ forget the rest because i wasn’t looking at the patch notes when i made my previous comment. so lets go over them.

- Eruption: cast time decreased by 0.6 seconds
– Unsteady Ground: increased by 1 second
– Lava Font: cast time decreased by 0.16 seconds
– Geyser: cast time decreased by 0.5 seconds
– Frozen Ground: cast time decreased by 0.16

so cast times as a whole by those skills are reduced by an entire 1.42 seconds. great. 1.42 seconds. i can cast an entire auto-attack with that with 0.02 seconds to spare.

Attack speed is 1 attack per 1.4 seconds.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fireball

the improvement to unsteady ground only affects the stragglers in WvW who weren’t at the frontline. considering nobody stands in the field for more than a second, this really doesn’t make much of a difference. increasing the cripple duration would, which would also be called a ‘buff’

my example for gust was a bad example. i can admit that

just because something wasn’t nerfed doesn’t mean it was buffed. if RTL didn’t have terrain issues any more it would be called a ‘fix’ or an ‘improvement’. a ‘buff’ would be an increase in range or damage, or have additional effects that were otherwise not previously there

and in no part did i mention “that Anet only balances through nerfs”. i don’t even know where or why you said that.

if you have 30 in water and projectiles are more of a problem than conditions, then use the aura share. radius of ~360-400 (same or greater than meteor shower). doesn’t matter that much if you aren’t specced for giving boons with auras when you can give 5 second projectile immunity to your team (1 second less than swirling winds but they can run around with it), whilst having good aoe heals

i’ve always felt the focus is only good while in earth and everything else was either situational or so-so

darkace.8925:

If you’d actually bothered to read the patch notes you’d know staff elementalists got a buff.

i play almost exclusively to staff. all those aftercast cooldowns were not buffs. they were improvements to our quality of life, but not buffs. reducing the aftercast down by 0.1-0.6 seconds is not a buff

these are buffs
- gust passing through multiple enemies
- meteor shower cast time decreased
- moving while casting healing rain

do bear in mind that gust deals no damage, so if someone has stability up then you effectively do nothing, they don’t even enter combat.
each meteor hits for an area the size of a non-blasting staff lava font or geyser (or lightning flash), while randomly distributed over a radius of 360

moving while casting healing rain was the only good thing for a skill that is already good

i think fire #5 should be a completely different skill. it’s strange how every profession that can leap into a fire field can get a fire aura, but to have a dedicated version on your skill bar has to have a cooldown of 40s.

it would make more sense to just replace Fire Shield with Cleansing Fire, or have a smoke field that makes projectiles miss (call it Smouldering Ashes or something). anything that gives active defence would be better than a fire aura

(part 2)

15:10 – staff uses combo fields “in a weird way”, “one of the better healers”, use healing power, has lots of aoe for PvE and WvW
16:03 – sceptre is single focused, dragons tooth is a combo finish, hurl is a combo finish
16:30 – focus is built for defence
16:49 – flamewall is bugged since last update, cancels itself
17:09 – sigils, bloodlust/corruption/precision
17:31 – izzy doesn’t use any of above
17:42 – “the ele has really powerful… getting up from being downed, especially with all the persistent aoe and damage the ele can throw around. A lot of your skill damage can be triggered when you’re in your downed state and you can fight back, so there’s a lot of ‘getting back into the fight’ with the ele”
18:00 – on-kill sigils are good, izzy prefers weapon-swap, sigil of force and on-crit are good
18:24 – food, boon duration is good for attunement swap, works well with ‘bountiful power’
19:12 – trait ‘healing ripple’ good for swapping to water, gives regen and health from ‘soothing mist’
19:47 – sharpening stones and tuning crystals are good consumables
20:03 – precision is used in a lot of builds, can be better than power depending on how much power you have
20:14 – divinity runes for “raw damage”, scholar runes only if traited for high damage
21:03 – rampage armour is “underappreciated”, use with berserker jewellery with beryl jewels
21:47 – use rabid for condition builds
22:10 – boon duration runes are good with attunement swap
22:36 – utility skills, cantrips are good, use lightning flash with churning earth or burning speed
23:29 – mist form is good, commonly used
23:44 – signet of earth is good for WvW and PvP, signet of fire is good for burning, glyph of storms is “underestimated”
24:46 – arcane wave is a blast finisher
25:10 – signet of restoration is good for “spammy builds”
25:30 – Question: single or dual attunements – fresh air, otherwise you must use all attunements
26:45 – Question: balance changes to mobility – “we don’t want the like to be the best mobile character in the game”, ele can change roles during combat so mobility is a trade-off
28:15 – Question: ele locked in water/arcane trait – working on it
28:56 – Question: “jack of all trades” – “if any one of those things becomes just as powerful as other professions who are entirely designed to do that or entirely set up… this is a big build of theirs to be heavy into that, then when you have the comparison with someone who can do that and a bunch of other little things, it makes that profession so much better than the other professions”, “we want the ele to be able to swap between powerful modes and really successful things, but we don’t want them to overshine others because they innately come with different things they can do”

ok i’m going to write down what he talks about through this video, for anyone who hasn’t watched or wants a reminder of what izzy was talking about

00:50 – no plans on single attunement builds. don’t stick to one attunement since you have 20 skills
1:14 – using combo fields
1:30 – use eruption with fire fields for might
1:50 – use static field with blast finishers for swiftness
2:13 – ele uses more stats than other professions, each weapon has mix of dmg/condition, try to spec for all-round
2:50 – divinity runes and dragon starcakes are best for ele, “they are phenomenal”
3:18 – using combo fields, eruption is a blast finisher, use with combo fields
4:14 – use might, might gives dmg and condition buff, good for ele
4:43 – sigil of battle works with ele, all “swap-sigils” work with attunements
5:14 – eles have “a real desire to spec to arcane and water magic”
5:24 – using trait ‘elemental surge’, “one of the most fun traits”
5:43 – was talking about ‘evasive arcana’, not elemental surge, EA gives a blast combo in earth, ‘cleansing wave’ in water
6:12 – ‘persisting flames’ is good with blast finishers
6:44 – trait elemental attunement is good
6:51 – think about what attunement you want to start in before entering combat
7:28 – attunement swap is instant, good with EA when you want something on dodge
8:01 – arcane trait line is good for swapping attunements, a lot of builds use arcane trait
8:21 – water trait is used a lot in ele builds, mainly defense
8:36 – use ‘cleansing water’ with cantrips traited for regen
9:00 – sigil of energy is good for evade, eles use evade a lot in their traits
9:19 – using damage traits in water in combination with scholar runes
9:54 – use those traits with ‘bolt to the heart’
10:05 – use in combination with ‘conjure hammer’ for heavy aoe damage
10:27 – ‘diamond skin’ for high condition damage, use with rabid armour and undead runes, use condition consumables, sceptre earth skill #1 and earth trait ‘obsidian focus’, earth #1 is projectile finisher so use with fire fields
12:08 – food buffs – dragon starcakes are best for maxing dmg, truffle steak dinner is good, rare veggie pizza for condition
12:46 – PvE staff ele can kite while using aoe conditions, magnetic aura for ranged
13:31 – use FGS, skill #3 and #4 have mobility, looking into for balance, “get out of jail” skills
14:05 – burning retreat for escape
14:21 – “a lot of your defence comes from your mobility on your staff”
14:40 – focus is built for defence
14:48 – dagger is high dps, lots of dmg and condition, “in PvP and WvW, daggers are fun and strong to go for”

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

so much hate here

thank you Izzy for the video, definitely helpful for some of my friends who never played an Ele and are interested in doing so. People QQ over eles but seing how loved we are in WvW I have no fear. I love my Ele, even if he might not do the most damage we do pretty good damage. I’m starting to hate the min-maxers these days, this thread is the perfect showcase of why I do.

it’s nice that this video helped your friends who don’t know much about the ele, but for the rest of us who have spend so much time in this class this video was more like a kick in the teeth.
we don’t need a video to explain how a blast finisher works, nor do we need a video re-iterating information from viable builds we already know about. we knew about that on DAY 1

Schwahrheit.4203:

Oh man, the conjured weapons can only be used within 15 skills and it counts even if it misses LMAO.

says the guy who wants to give a buff to the warrior auto-attack.

Tinni.4351:

Firstly, Lord Faren is not gay or there is nothing to indicate he’s gay. Indeed, if you play through the human storyline you find that he’s romancing two women at the same time.

As for the Sylvari, as the others have said – most Sylvari couples you encounter involve a man and a woman. I suspect that you have been caught by a stereotype and because of the Sylvari accent and the register in which they speak, you think they might be homosexual – just like Lord Faren, when they are not.

i must have read this wrong. can you elaborate?

just want to double-check… you didn’t fight idiots, right?
i ask because last time i went to PvP, a warrior was charging towards me (i’m standing at waterfall), i throw out a fire elemental and he starts running away before we even fight.

is there anywhere i can watch the video posted?

This video has been removed because it is too long.
Sorry about that. -YouTube

Dronin.3957:

Shall we look at elementalist? DD elementalist can give themselves swiftness, has a 1200 charge, a 900 charge and a 600 charge, they also have a 1200 blink utility, they can also spec for an increased movement speed in air of up to 25%

remember that if you play d/d you are always in mid/close range and cannot switch to a long range wep while in combat. you will usually be around 240-600 depending on the skill used (excluding Ride the Lightning and Magnetic Grasp). also, the utility skill you are referring to (Lightning Flash) is 900, not 1200

the trait that gives passive movement speed (Zephyr’s Speed) does not stack with other movement speed buffs. the other trait (Windbourne Dagger) does not stack with speed buffs either. apparently it doesn’t work at all.

i don’t play as a thief so i won’t say whether you should or shouldn’t have a 1200 skill

Yayabingyi.2815:

Who cares about WoW, this is GW2! I mean to that I can say that I was a pro at Hello Kitty Online! Watch out! bonk bonk bonk

Watch out! We got ourselves a kitten over here!
(stupid profanity filter…)

I dont mind not having weapon swap (although alternating between long range AoE and single target close-mid range would be nice), what I want is a skill set on any weapon I equip to play as efficiently as any other class. Note how I say efficient. I don’t mind doing a song and dance to do the same damage or survive as well as any other profession, just let me do this at a similar speed and consistency to any other class.

the engineer skill Jump Shot can do jumping puzzles easily too

this analysis is probably more opinionated

ok, you probably meant this video when you said 14 kills.

• highest damage was churning earth with 5083 (previous CE was 2046 non crit)
• average damage ranged from 300-1000, occasionally hit for 1000-1400
• no use of elite
• play style is more about picking a certain target instead of running to the nearest red
• chased after stragglers with low range weapon, couldn’t attack until they stopped to fight
• even when you went on full attack your damage was not enough, meaning the game play was more about assisting other team players or generally playing it safe. i don’t play as d/d but i thought the play style of it was to kill or be killed
• you probably use 0/30/0/20/30
• during the fight in 0:51 you were clearly being hit for 1k, with skills hitting from 1-3k. an enemy ele (staff user shooting only fireball) was hitting you for 930-960 each hit
• going through the video again you were hit for 300-900 with standard attacks, skills were more around 900-1200 and crits were about 2k

i really don’t know what to say from this video. you picked your targets, you hit them with everything you had (switch to fire and build 5 stacks of might, gain more stacks by allied guardian with staff), but you still need someone nearby to drop them, which is a problem when the objective most often is to drop the enemy team as quick as possible in order to capture the area, or to scare/scatter them away from each other to fight them easier

i also don’t think you attacked as often as the previous video, but that’s an opinion.

i don’t have a toaster, will a grill suffice?

i’ll do another analysis on Game 2 later in the day, only watched the 1st 2mins and i’m not really sure if this will be any different…

for personal preference i would go with sceptre main hand, higher bleed stacked from the first skill with added range. you are also capable of doing everything you mentioned as you didn’t specifically state a skill you would use on main hand

don’t use tornado. don’t. you’re a slow moving, easy to hit from range target, and you won’t hit for much damage since you didn’t spec towards direct damage. you can also be turned into a moa during the transformation. get the elemental instead

Morthis.3968:

I must be missing something here. Video proof of Ele being fine, using a WvW video, against what is most likely a bunch of level 5’s running around in WvW with 1/10th of the damage, survivability, or skills of level 80 characters?

Quoted for effect. WvW isn’t an even playing field in the way sPvP is. A fair amount of enemy players were clearly not the same level and most likely have sub-par gear

you got 7 kills, not 14 as you stated (shown 7:49)
you can also calculate it too: 85 (total score) – 50 (capture/defend/neutralise points) = 35 -> each kill is 5 points so 35/5 = 7 (total kills)

so let’s focus on the kills:
(times noted for kill confirmation, not start of battle)

• kill 1 – thief vs 2 ele (1:29) I just found out that battle 1 and 2 are actually against the same red thief, so the other 3-4 blues that walked by also get the kill for passing by and hitting the thief while he was downed
• kill 2 and 3 – team vs team near the cap point (you had to escape to survive so you weren’t there at the point of down/defeat, not that it matters in this game) (4:01)
• first death
• kill 4 – 4 blues vs 1 red (5:20)
• kill 5 – 4 blues vs 2 red, 1 red escaped, 2 blue defeated, you turn back and hit while red was <10% HP
• kill 6 – 2-3 blues vs 1 red (6:53)
• kill 7 – 3-4 blue vs 1 red (7:23)

so out of this video, the first and second kill were from defending and assisting your team, while the other 5 were from staying with your team and hitting what everyone else hit

i didn’t say you were a bad player. perhaps my last comment was a little over the top. you’re more than competent to play the class but most of those kills were from your team outnumbering the enemy and sticking together in the same area, which is most likely the same reason why your team lost the battle

an example of how balanced the ele is can be seen with the first battle. the thief at the start of the video was holding off 2 ele with the same d/d crit build by himself for around one minute. he also survived for 30 seconds with his health never reaching more than 30%. he died at the end, of course, but i cannot recall a time when an ele has ever survived by themselves for that long with the use of dodge/stun break/CC/etc while being targeted by two others (0:20-1:20). it would be fair if we could hit hard to compensate for our lack of survivability (without relying solely on churning earth), but we don’t seem to have that either.

we are also the only class that doesn’t have a proper CC on our #2 skill while downed. single target immobilise that needs to be channelled just doesn’t cut it.

writing this down so i dont have to watch the vid again (faster reading), and please record at a better quality.

• most of the kills were by waiting for other players nearby to help out.
• most often the enemy team was uncoordinated and grouped together, meaning any stragglers were defeated by 2-4 blues.
• you died once and nearly died again due to school boy errors (run back into a fight with ~10% HP / not realising 5 stacks of confusion)
• for the most of the match you were not the main target, when you were your team outnumbered the enemy, leading the enemy to be scared away
• highest critical damage was 1436 on what looks like a light armoured player. your average crit ranged anywhere from 800-1200 depending on the attunement bu you did occasionally hit for 1200-1300
• your build seems to be focused on high crit, the amount of damage you inflict however (direct or condition) doesn’t seem that impressive
• during ‘battle 3’ when you targeted a signet warrior (clearly an idiot player, didn’t immobilise you, charged towards, 100B the air, ran around in circles and few to none of his attacks hit) you still couldn’t defeat him, you didn’t have enough damage to drop his health fast enough (specifically, you could not deal more damage than the engineer healing turret could heal). you were also on water attunement to heal so you could not deal enough damage and you could not heal with cleansing wave (battle at 2:17)
• you never used your elite. ever. even when you stepped back to heal up or were waiting for the enemy team to run forwards. yes the elite is crap but an extra tick of something (dmg/heal/chill/stun) would still help out
• i don’t think your churning earth ever hit your target. the other ele on your team on the other hand dropped a thief’s health from ~65% to ~25% (0:50)
• most often the conditions you inflicted were 2 stacks of bleed and burn, i am guessing you do not run a condition build (perhaps 0/20/0/30/30)

i really hope that wasn’t your best video or you were playing lazy that round. my complaint on your gameplay is mentioned in the third bullet point. i have yet to watch the other video.

when watching how fast my brother (ranger) drops mobs
when watching my brother kill 2 invaders in WvW while downed
when using an elite skill (tornado), i become even more of an easy target
when the only useful skill i have while downed is used to run away
when reading on the forum, others say glass cannon is the only viable build
when reading on the forum, others say staff ele is generally useless and is the reason for discrimination during dungeons
when reading on the forum, others say ele is not broken because they can kill 10 unintelligent AI mobs that stand on AoE
when reading on the forum, others say ele is not broken and want you to use the same cookie cutter build they use

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/401/313/e65.gif

Or have it as an elite?

actually other classes DO care about how much you are contributing, that’s why you rarely see ele in sPvP and quite a bit of discrimination against ele in dungeons

I find it strange to see a post about the staff that says it takes more effort. I play exclusively as a staff ele as I find it easier than the other weapon sets. I would call myself a competent player, but not any better than any other ele I’ve met.

Incoming list of hate

Lightning Surge
LS is way too slow to be effective if you are the target, most of the time you will be due to lower health and armour. The increase blind aoe from blasting staff might make up for it, although I cannot tell the effective range at all.

Gust
I have watched every enemy strafe around gust like it doesn’t exist. This skill has only been useful against mindless melee characters that run face first or anyone that isn’t paying attention.

Ice Spike
This should have been a combo field (Blast). It is the only serious damage attack on Water magic. It wouldn’t even be overpowered considering you have to switch to another element otherwise you waste time for skills to cool down.

I strongly dislike how we only have 1 blast finisher (excluding utilities), Eruption. It means I have to, most of the time, rely on Arcane Wave for an irregular blast finish (~30s) as I don’t want to jump back to Earth magic solely for 1 skill while staying idle for the others to cool down or switch to another element and waste more time to wait for Earth Magic to cool down.

The more I write this down, the more I think about how we (staff ele) lack the capability of fully utilising our own combo fields, the very same thing that makes us useful.

Gelrod.1295:

Good Video, good explanations + playstyle… I don’t completly agree with your build, but I guess that doesn’t matter^^

zafery.6784:

Yet a similarly quick warrior can destroy groups of people and change the battle with similarly clever play-style…

Most people here are not saying elementalists are unplayable.. It is playable, and when played optimally it is just as effective as any other average joe playing another profession… But this means: it is subpar…

I don’t agree with this. You can’t really compare Warrior and Elementalist, cause they serve different roles. And if you do: I’d usually take an Elemtalist over a Warrior for my team.

what role did you have in mind? in a game where apparently every class should be able to take on similar roles in one form or another (with different play styles, etc), what specific role should we the elementalist be playing?