Guild Wars 2

The fun thing with ele is that it’s such a complex class (mesmers as well) that every day I find something new I want to try or change. I’ve been playing ele since launch and mesmer shortly after. If you were immediately bored with ranger then I think warrior and guardian will not hold your attention. Thief is a boat load of fun once you hit lvl 80, especially in WvW (12k backstabs?!? yes please), but I just don’t find that it captures my attention because, at least for me it’s very “rinse and repeat” and I want a class that allows you to react to a situation… thief is more about molding a situation to fit your playstyle, Ele and Mesmer are about molding your playstyle to fit the situation.

Ele and Mesmer keep you coming back wondering if you could do this differently, or trait this slightly different, or put these two or three things together in a different way to change it up. “Just Smash A” builds and classes just aren’t for me, if they’re not for you either, then stick with ele till at least lvl 50 or 60, it starts getting oh so much better.

ChaosDoom.8459:

SlimGenre, the last time I checked Crafted Exotic armor are the same stats as dungeon armor. Correct me if I am wrong.

I actually think your right… thanks for the catch… it’s pretty clear on Wiki that the attribute stats are the same, but for the life of me I can’t find the defense stats on the crafted armor page… for instance, exotic dungeon and karma armor is a total of 920 defense… is crafted the same?

I’m sure I was thinking about Order armor or Tier 3 armor which stats are lower then exotic (which doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever, I just used the skins over a dungeon set I had)

Either way, I still think it’s a waste to pay for crafted armor personally, I haven’t done a lot of research but I do think there are some attribute combinations that are available crafted but not dungeon… and vice versa (like Giver’s or Valkyrie)

Hey all,
I need to finish my Exploration title, all I need left is a couple towers and garrison on Blue BL. Do you guys mind if my guild and I from Mag cap all of Blue BL tonight? Just long enough for me to finish my title ??

:)

Only a Mesmer can /sit, /dance, /sleep and still win a fight.

~~ Continued ~~

- Traits –
I haven’t run a Signet heavy build in a long time, so you may have your traits set up perfect for how you like to play your signet build, but they may be all wrong for other options… or all wrong entirely once you’ve tried some other stuff and come up with a solid mix of things. So since you’ve played “Signet Heavy” builds, now go make, as I suggested above a “Glyph / Cantrip / Arcane Heavy” builds and then work them all together. Lightning Flash and Arcane Wave are two skills that will rarely leave my utilities bar. The other depends on situation, something it’s Glyph of Storms, sometimes it’s Frost Bow, sometimes Cleansing Wave… just depends on the situation. In fact, once you run more dungeons, you’ll constantly be swapping that Utility out depending on the situation. Especially Ascalonian Catacombs… there are a couple section on two of the three paths where having an Ele who knows what they’re doing on p1 and p3 makes everything run sooooo much smoother.

- Armor -
Last but not least. My personal take on Armor is, start thinking more survivability and as your skill as a player increases move towards more damage output. I have 3 armor sets, my standard PVT, a Prec/Vit/Healing Power set I wear when I’m running support staff in WvW and my magic find gear when I’m farming. All my crafted trinkets are Zerkers (my Ascended stuff is a mix because it’s from drops) and my daggers and scepter are CoF zerkers. My staff in Prec/Vit/Healing power (but again, when I run staff it’s for a very specific reason and build).
Also – DO NOT Waste the money on buying Exotic Crafted armor… Exotic Crafted Trinkets are fine, but DO NOT BUY Exotic Crafted Armor. Get the best lvl 80 Rare (yellow) armor you can and run your dungeons. Exotic Crafted Armor stats are less then Dungeon or Karma Armor, and cost a small fortune, don’t wast 10-15g buying something you’re going to replace within a week or two anyway. Once you start running dungeons you’ll be extremely surprised how quickly the money rolls in. If you only have 1 character over lvl 35 then it will take you 7 days, 1.5 hrs per day to run AC enough to get your Dungeon Armor… that’s barely a grind. You’ll also end up with 20+ gold by the time you’re done. If you have the time, and multiple characters, you can cut that down substantially. It will take 20 dungeon path completions to get a full set of armor, each path takes about half hour on average and nets a little over 1g per path. Can only run each path once per day to get full 60 tokens per path. The only faster way to make money in game than running dungeons is T6 mat farming in Orr, where I can make 5-6g per hour, but who really wants to just run and chop, run and pick, run and mine… I’m way to ADD for that.

Welcome to 80 It’s a long road to get Ele to 80 but worth it, so now you finally get to shine. BTW, you asked for it, Wall of Text incoming in 3… 2… 1…

- Dungeons –
Well, the most important learning curve for dungeons is learning the dungeon itself, start with Ascalonian Catacombs, mainly because you’ll probably want to get your exotic armor from there (most D/D ele’s wear PVT armor, easiest place to get it). Also, unlike standard “run around by yourself” PvE, dungeons focus more on group play, so you may consider speccing into the things that benefit your team. Do you know your might stacking chains on your different weapon sets? Do you know about aurashare? Start thinking about team mechanics not just your own damage output.

- Utilities –
There are lots of different ways to play ele’s, so I’d experiment with each of them and find what you like best before you settle on one. For a while go with each of these heavily specced to benefit them, a Glyph Builds, Signet Builds, Cantrip Builds or Arcane Builds. I’d try to spec a build into each of those categories for a week or so and see what you like and what you don’t and then come up with one that works for you. Then you can pick and choose the things that you like the most out of each.
1. Signet Builds – There are certain signets that are fine I guess. But if you’re running signet shouldn’t you have 30 in Earth to take Written in Stone so you can spam those signets active affects as well as maintain the passive? Also, you’d be using the healing signet here.
2. Glyph Builds – I run a Glyph build when I’m running support staff in WvW. Glyph of Storms is amazing from sandstorm – damage, bleeding and reapplied AoE blind? Yes Please.
3. Cantrip Builds – Please at least try out a cantrip build for a while. If nothing else it will teach you other things about your class. Six months ago when the game was brand new and all us new Ele’s were first hitting 80 we were trying tons of different things, you’ve got the benefit of not having to fight through the same mistakes we did by asking questions. Below is a build to play with for a while to LEARN more about your Ele. I’m not saying this is a good build to run, but it will teach you a ton about managing boons and aura’s, which are the lifeblood of the D/D ele. For about a week of play, try putting 10 pts in each of the 5 categories and the other 20 wherever you want, I recommend at least taking water up to 25 so that you can get increased damage per boon, which you will have a lot of. Consider taking the traits, Spell Slinger (Fire), Zephyr’s Boon (Air), Elemental Shielding (Earth), Soothing Disruption (Water), and Elemental Attunement (Arcane). The other 20 pts are up to you, but by taking Water up to 25 pts you get 2% additional damage per boon, and with the build above you will have 7+ boons at all times, that’s a lot of extra damage, far more than the 200 pts in power you’d be sacrificing. Take 3 cantrips instead of your sigils. I don’t ever use Mist Form anymore, haven’t for months, but a lot of ele’s like it because it’s a good “Oh Crap I’mma bout ta die!!” button. I’d take Lightning Flash, Armor of Earth and Cleansing Wave. Again, this isn’t a good build to play on all the time by any means, but it’s a great way to learn more about the class.
4. Arcane Build – Arcane Wave will never leave my utility bar… ever… like ever… no matter what weapon set I’m running having an insta-blast finisher is just too good to get rid of. See a Mesmer field? Pop and you’ve got chaos armor; see a light field from Mes or Guardian? boom retaliation; see a poison field from a Necro or Thief? blast for AoE weakness… it’s just so beneficial. Arcane Power adds a nice guaranteed boost for you Churning Earth or Fire Grab when you absolutely need it to crit.

Radamanth.9048:

for once, it forced me into another spec.

Im mostly exclusivly playing WwW on my ele, and 15 sec CD was just the right timeframe to dive into something, do your stuff, and get out again, the typical thing d/d eles do, we all know it.

so i specced 0/20/0/20/30 now, am squishier than before, but i got my cd back (+ 1 sec, but who cares). 20 sec CD on aura and 32 on Updraft help aswell to ease my pain for losing 10 in water.

Perhaps spec 0/15/0/25/30 if you’re not running aurashare, you don’t get that 1s CD back, but you do still get the increased damage for each boon, which as a d/d ele you should be stacking a lot of those.

teg.1340:

SlimGenre.6417:

lol, it could be worse, you could be a class that can’t maintain swiftness… I get so bored trying to get somewhere on anyone but my ele…

with buffs on aura’s getting you up to like 5m of swiftness, what else ya gonna do besides sit there and spam RTL, Burning Speed and Lightning Flash to increase our already rediculously easy to maintain mobility.

5m of swiftness? What are you talking about? I really have a hard time stacking enough swiftness since the latest patch. Reduced Swiftness and Fury uptime hits me very hard.

Obviously I was exaggerating (well, not really, if you did nothing but run around for an hour stacking swiftness because you were bored, then yes, you could easily achieve any number of minutes of swiftness), but I could easily get that much swiftness if I cared to back prior to the patch with 2xwater and 2xmonk runes on an D/D aurashare build, it just takes longer now.

I am able to maintain fury easily with my usual S/D build I run in dungeons and wvw as long as I’m quick with my attunement swaps, there’s no doubt we can still maintain perm swiftness in d/d even if it has been nerfed some. As long as it will maintain 1s or more longer than it takes to cycle back through aura’s and attunement swap back to air, then yes you can still get many minutes of swiftness… not that you need it.

DeusVolt.3298:

i was

what you expect me to run everywhere?

screw that

lol, it could be worse, you could be a class that can’t maintain swiftness… I get so bored trying to get somewhere on anyone but my ele…

with buffs on aura’s getting you up to like 5m of swiftness, what else ya gonna do besides sit there and spam RTL, Burning Speed and Lightning Flash to increase our already rediculously easy to maintain mobility.

I find it odd that someone wouldn’t be able to tab and find you… I rarely am able to hide unless I can break line-of-sight and they can’t target me. Would be interested to know how you avoid detection by means other than just someone “seeing” you on their screen.

I’m hoping for some CONSTRUCTIVE ideas we can share as a GW community with Anet to possibly shake things up regarding WvW, especially since server transfer are more pricey and it’s unlikely to see massive guild transfers anymore.

My concern is WvW is going to become locked into place, where Every Blue Team will stay Blue for the remainder of time and the Green and Red teams will occasionally swap back and forth between tiers. As a member of a server which isn’t quite good enough to advance higher than Red in Tier 3 but too good to drop below Green in Tier 4, we’re going to be fighting the same couple servers over and over for the rest of eternity.

Unfortunately I’m not sure what a good fix to this monotony will be? We can’t possibly have a tournament style play now, because everyone will just end up where they started. I guess the question is…

Can we come up with any way to balance out the servers and make the play seem more fair from top to bottom? Unfortunately a lot of this has to do with server interest in WvW and how many people you have covering the hours when the majority of your server is sleeping. Those servers with solid 24 hour coverage should always win against a server that can hold out 12 hours a day and get crushed the next.

Again, I’m not complaining, and I don’t know of a solution, but it’d be nice to have some brainstorming and possibly get Anet’s opinion of this, if they see it as a problem or not. It’d just be more exciting to follow the leaderboards if those leaderboards changed occasionally.

From what I read, the nerfs are minor and the buffs are great, so I’m with you, don’t know what all the complaining is about, except that it’s a change and no matter what the change is, someone will complain about it.

Quee.2389:

Single target enemies should be no problem, so what I did when I was leveling was to use the weapons that are well suited for fighting multiple enemies. This is the Staff and the Sword + Focus.

Chaos Storm + iWarden + Sword #2 will put the hurt on a group of enemies.

add in Focus 4 and then while standing on the field and in Sword 3 twice and staff 2 Phase Retreat for leap finishers and retaliation stacks… that helps… and don’t forget to stack confusion from your shatters. Chaos storm, if you can stand in it and fight for it’s duration will really pile on the boons… mesmers are kitten hard to kill if played correctly, even if you just stand there… Retaliation/Confusion/all Boons except stability/and Chaos Armor!? Good grief, you can literally stack those up and not attack and NPC’s will kill themselves.

Absolutely agree with the “mindset” comments. I usually start my PvP with my ele because I’m most proficient with that class, but mesmer is the most fun for 1v1 duels IMO. 3 or 4 matches in and I’ve got a rhythm.

I run a sword+focus/staff or sword+pistol/staff build in PvP and WvW and am very happy with it.

running my thief and mesmer yesterday through CoF, I realized that if I pop a stealth an NPC who was already hitting me will continue to follow me and attack, even when I’m stealthed… is this supposed to happen?

running my thief and mesmer yesterday through CoF, I realized that if I pop a stealth an NPC who was already hitting me will continue to follow me and attack, even when I’m stealthed… is this supposed to happen?

Not telling you what you should do, just saying how I play S/D… I’ve tried a DoT bleed build and I’m much happier with this option because bleeds (other than Churning Earth) are only single target (I’m assuming in this build you spend a lot of time spamming Earth 1 to stack bleeds). Some of your burning is AoE, but burning is not the worlds best condition imo, just a nice add on.

S/D also offers something no other class has, 6 blast finishers (assuming you take Evasive Arcana Trait and Arcane Wave), and shouldn’t be ignored.

I run a 15/0/0/25/30 S/D in dungeons and WvW. Maintain 25 stacks of might on my whole team and my might stacking chain does 12-15k dmg AoE each time I cycle through. More of a burst damage build for larger groups, but solo DPS for PvE is so easy anyway, it doesn’t really matter what you hit them with.

Ele has some OK condition damage, but personally I choose to worry more about buffing my team and burst damage and let the necro’s and ranger’s worry about conditions.

if they’re guildies then absolutely, you guys want to work as a team or why build a guild in the first place… if they’re pugs, then a simple, “I’m stacking might” or “I’m an aurashare build” in party chat before you start is helpful. It’s easier to just tell them what you can bring to the table, if they want to take advantage, good for them, if not, not your problem

My guild is always talking on TS or Mumble on dungeon runs or WvW so we can keep organized.

patience… it’s worth it… lol, some of us who rolled ele early, it took a long time for us to figure out using our combo fields and boon management because we didn’t have the guides on this site to read through If you like the playstyle but feel squishy, then stick it out, it’ll get much easier.

hharry.1967:

For dungeons some times is overkill considering with S/D you have 4 blast finishers you dont really need the one for EA, plus theres always someone else who will give a few stacks of might to the party as well.

You are right, im using another playstyle, i feel like damage isnt enough without 20 on air (so i use 20 on arcana as well). Im not even using boon duration runes, i have always gone for damage/crit damage while still having P/V/T gear (in spv) and P/V/T + knights a few zerker (in WvWvW/pve), so my 20th trait in air was just a 10% damage, which is now replaced for the 20% cd reduction so i dont have to change my playstyle with RTL, i guess this nerf didn’t really affect me at all, compared to the old school 10/30/30. And i tell you i wreck other eles which use EA doesn’t matter if it is WvWvW or sPvP.

Now however im a bit bored of this build and i would like new builds but i guess that wont happen any time soon.

And there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but I still find that I’m doing most of the might stacking in dungeons or whatever… even when I’m with other ele’s unfortunately. I run a 15/0/0/25/30 or 0/15/0/25/30 S/D depending on what I’m doing, pts in power when I’m doing something that requires more AoE, and pts in Precision when I’m in PvP and need more single-target dps. My D/D build, probably like yours, looks nothing like the standard DaPheonix build, especially in PvP where I’m much more concerned with single target.

That’s why I rolled a mesmer months ago and it’s my favorite alt (ele will always be my baby though). A lot more options for different traiting and playstyle.

I’ve been sitting on my 30 for a few days now wondering the same thing… I always think I know what I want, and then change my mind later – I have 3 different armor sets for my ele, all exotic, and now think I want a fourth

What I’ve found is the longer I play this class, the more I move away from PVT because skill replaces the need for safer armor over time. I now still mainly wear PVT armor in WvW, but all my weapons and trinkets are zerkers, so I’m probably going to go with a zerker amulet.

Decisions. decisions… ???

Dear OP,
I absolutely agree with you that people need to just chill about the nerf/buff thing, the 3rd Universal Rule of Forums – if a man makes a post, another man will tell them their wrong. However, like many others while everything you said was fantastic, the one tiny piece where you mentioned 30 in arcane sends the hairs on the back of my neck straight up. Instead of mocking you and calling you a kitten as is standard practice for forum responses, perhaps a suggestion as to the benefit of 30 in Arcane. Perhaps this is a style of play you haven’t thought of trying, perhaps it is and it’s just not your cup of tea, but just in case.

I run my S/D and D/D builds with the idea of “blast finishers first, everything else second.” With the S/D build I run In about 3 seconds with S/D in hand I can drop about 12-14k AoE damage, stack 18 might AoE (21 on myself) and 10 seconds later get everyone up to 25 and then keep them there for as long as I want, and all of that revolves around having 30 in Arcane. That’s just my build, there are easy ways to increase that to 25 might stacks on the first rotation with additional cantrips… I just don’t carry a lot of cantrips. That may not be your playstyle, but don’t tell me that’s useless. For dungeon runs and in WvW it’s substantial.

EA in Air and Earth are by far the most useful attunements for the blast finishers and the flashbang AoE blind.

EA in earth for AoE blasts… Swiftness? Maintaining 25 might stacks on the whole party? AoE Weakness? AoE Frost/Chaos/Shock Armor? AoE Retaliation? Evasive Arcana with only a 10s CD is such an amazing trait for group support.

I run a lot of dungeons with PuG groups from the lfg.com site, at least 2 chars through CoF daily (saving up ecto’s for my legendary), and I’m absolutely amazed at how few ele’s understand the group AoE support and damage that can be done thanks to the massive number of blast finishers we can carry. Let’s say I’m on my mesmer with 3 warriors and an ele… and the ele is plinking with staff? I freaking love staff, there are so many d/d ele’s out there and they’re missing out on other great weapon sets like staff, but for pete’s sake with that much melee damage, pull out you s/d or d/d and get in there… 3 warriors with an extra 875 power as well as me on s/d dropping AoE damage over and over, also with an extra 875 power so far outweighs 1 ele with meteor shower who’s too scared to get into the thick of it… it’s rediculous.

Sorry… got off topic there…

To each their own so if it’s a style you’ve tried and just don’t like, then it’s not for you, but for the dynamics of group play, you’re severely limiting your abilities and the benefit you can bring to other people in your party. If you’re a PvE roamer, then don’t wast the time worrying about blast finishers, you don’t need them, but EA provides massive benefit for the melee-range Ele.

I’m not a necro, well I have one, but I don’t play it often… but this is an idea that I’m sure I’m not the only one that thought of it.

So I see people sending their Flesh Golem on the rampage occasionally for the knockdown. Anyone else think it’d be cool if the flesh golem’s charge worked like the Charger from the Left for Dead series, where it not only knocks you down but then pounds you into the ground until it’s dead?

OK, well for GW it’d be stupid if it had to be killed by someone else to free you, but at least for a few seconds… Stun breakers could work to free yourself, or your teammates could kill it, or perhaps it only lasts for 2 or 3 seconds, but it would give the necro a chance at some burst damage.

Plus, how funny it would be to turn your head as a team mate of yours just sent their golem into the fight and there’s that warrior getting slammed on it’s back 2 or 3 times for a couple small ticks of damage.

Guess this was just wasted thread space… oh well One can dream though…

According to the Wiki it is either Weakness, Bleed or Vuln. Are you sure it’s coming from you? If so, think it was part of the recent patch maybe?

I’m wondering why armor’s/aura’s do not stack in duration? Anyone ever heard an answer to this?

Same with my ele, if I drop Frozen Ground it’s a waste to drop more then one blast finisher because it caps at 5 seconds.

I guess Anet has to cap some things occasionally, can’t have 5m of every boon up all the time, and armors, and aura’s… etc.

My two favorite classes are ele and mesmer. If you like the playstyle of mesmer, you will like ele, they’re both complicated, require a fair bit of finger gymnastics to master and keep you on your toes. If you’re looking for button mashing then roll a ranger or warrior, if you’re looking for a burst and then wait for CD’s, try thief. Thief is actually a lot of fun when I just want to zone out and not think “technical” about my play, but still want to just drop people quick. Great single target burst… way more fun in WvW then PvE though.

If you were bored with Guardian (as I was, mine’s at lvl 35 and will probably stay there forever) then I wouldn’t recommend ranger or warrior.

I run a 15/0/0/25/30 with PVT armor, zerker weps and trinkets (for the most part, my ascended stuff is half zerker half PVT basically). At 25 stacks of might even though I’m not full zerkers my CE still crits for over 8k, DT and most of my other blasts crit for 3-5k (DT, Ring, etc). Lightning bolt hits for about 2500. It has all the tanky abilities of a D/D ’daPheonix" ele (without the aurashare) but substantially more damage output.

I run a lot of fotm with guys from my guild, most of the high level guys I run with are melee damage (two warriors, a guardian and another ele is my main group) so I just run a might stacking dps build (my other ele runs S/D too) and we do great. Sometimes I’ll run a support staff build if my ele buddy is also running S/D.

He’s just looking for what everyone else is, a place to GvG that doesn’t kitten off people who’d rather see them accomplishing WvW goals

Why does AoE (like barrage or meteor shower) not have extended range from on top of walls? In real life (and certainly with trebs in game) elevation is a benefit, however for our individual skills it’s a hindrance… why?

Excited to change things up, really want to finish up my Explorer title not gunna happen with FA Let’s keep it civil folks and see some great fights.

My predictions for the forums this week…

Friday : Everyone starts out being polite and sharing how fun it will be for some different competition
Saturday : “something about great fights with that one guy from that other server and I had a lot of fun stomping you over and over”
Sunday : Threads quiet, everyone running dungeons for a day
Monday : OG has now established their dominance on the forums as the best small guild EVER, constantly reminding any posters from other servers that they’re willing to fight below SS camp. Members of EB and CD begin to post videos where they claim “Bunzy ran away” from a fight… Bunzy denies.
Tuesday : “something about any party larger than 6 people is a zerg”
Wednesday : Paralda tries to calm everyone down but it doesn’t work and thread get’s locked.
Thursday : Every time someone loses a fight it’s because Shadow Refuge still screws with culling and they were zerged. Argument ensue, Paralda tries again to calm everyone down, doesn’t work, second thread get’s locked.
Friday : Everyone is bored with the matchup and looking forward to reset. A handful of congratulations are given out and a few more people claiming “Bunzy ran away” … Bunzy again extends offers for “fair fights” below SS camp after reset… no one agrees.

I think that pretty much sums up every Mag thread over the past month, so I’m guessing we’ll see similar.

ower.9143:

Magiofdeath.2745:

Waking.6052:

Farout.8207:

I would be happy if FA went to tier 2 but I am afraid we are stuck with them for a while. But even if they move up and TC moved down to join us it will be pretty much the same deal. Same goes for you guys, if you move down to tier 4 you will dominate and the match will get stale. Both DB and Mag are in a pretty crappy spot. Overpowered servers above us and underpowered below.

Do what we did. Join forces and create Maguumabrand.

Or Draguuma.

I’d take DB over Magoobers any day. They at least understand how WvW works and don’t cry on the forums about how every fight isn’t 5v5 and call anything over 7 ppl a zergball.

There’s only 1 guild on our server that I’ve seen consistently cry out about this, they’re just the most outspoken around here… most of us enjoy our community quite well.

On Millenium we’re only currently projected to be 1 pt above YB, so it’s possible we move down this week, if not then definitely next. Frankly I’m kinda looking forward to it, but only for purely selfish reasons, I need to finish mapping WvW to get my gift of exploration

It is true regarding match ups getting somewhat stale… especially since transfers are going to be fewer now. We’ll all lock into our positions, Mag will spend the rest of time bouncing between T3 and T4, FA will do the same T2 and T3, poor DB will forever be ranked in 8th place until the end of time… our servers might as well get used to each other…

zastari.1730:

Saradon WarChild.2034:

We care about you caring about the score because it leads to lil zerglings culling around the map and lobbing golems at empty keeps instead of interesting pvp.

That’s a really good point. Maybe sometime in the future Anet will put in some sort of structured PVP system, other than WVW, where people can “prove” their skills without having to worry about elements like server population, zerg size or capturing and holding structures they’re not interested in!

One can only hope I guess.

You were doing a good job at making an sPvP joke until

Saradon WarChild.2034:

…capturing and holding structures they’re not interested in!

Let me know when sPvP has team deathmatch I’ll be the first one there !!

10v10 or 20v20 deathmatch… sounds good to me, that way OG can take their rants on the WvW threads to different forums and we can actually talk about WvW here instead of who has the better guild for a fight that can never happen in the non-sterile environment that is WvW

etrigan.4213:

Skapocalypse.5236:

This matchup has officially run it’s course and has become just plain boring now. I don’t know if I can take another week of this matchup it’s just the same thing every day

- 12AM-5 AM EST FA makes the maps green
- 6AM-12PM EST DB makes the maps blue
- 1PM-7PM EST Mag takes back there stuff and pushes both servers and for a while the battle is even.
- 8-11 PM EST FA wakes up and starts taking the majority of the map while Mag goes to bed and DB starts to trail off.

It’s like clockwork now. Something needs to change.

This is what I don’t understand. Mag is a NA server. Are they a bunch of 12yr olds going to bed at 9pm??

DB at least shows up for a bit.

Sort of, I think we’re actually all 25 – 35 year olds, have jobs to get to by 8am the next morning, spouses to tend to, kids to feed, etc.

In S/D it’s very easy to maintain 25 stacks might on yourself at all times, so that boosts dmg output a lot. Also, because PvE is against non-thinking NPC’s, they’re not going to run away from your Dragon’s Tooth. I run a 15/0/0/25/30 for S/D pretty much standard wherever I am, PvE, PvP, WvW. Utilities are Lightning Flash, Arcane Wave, and whatever I feel like I need at the time for my 3rd. In WvW I use Dragon’s Tooth primarily as an additional blast finisher in Ring of Fire for more might, if it hits players, great, if not, that’s just more might for me and anyone else in range.

I also fight S/D in melee range like I were running my D/D build, so your big hits are more likely to connect.

Mesmer portal reminds me of being a monk in GW1. Every success or failure is entirely your fault…

… I run a lot of cof, I feel your pain

However, I will say I was in a CoF group earlier today with 3 mesmers, thief and warrior… I’d NEVER seen the effigy go down so quickly thanks to multiple feedback bubbles and timewarp…

it’s a supply game, especially in the higher tiers. I’ll see entire guilds holding down NE or NW camp in enemy territory to make sure east or west keep get’s dolyaks from two camps.

The single option for guild armor is not the best looking stuff in the game, but I want to rep my guild other than just WvW without looking like a carbon copy of everyone else. It’d be nice if when we purchase guild armor we can simply place the logo somewhere on any armor set. I’m not a game designer, I’m sure this is a lot more work than I realize, but it’d be nice to have

kokocabana.8153:

So you’re saying that you have access to a direct teleport to LA, but don’t want to pay for it. And you also have access to a free teleport to LA, but are unwilling to wait for it.

lol… that pretty much sums it up

Elites are hardly that, but I do have to say I’m becoming more and more a fan of tornado, especially in WvW… It is silly that a thief’s Dagger Storm is sort of similar, but the thief get’s to reflect projectiles while we don’t.

Although tornado isn’t the worlds greatest elite, there’s something funny about tossing a 20 or 30 man enemy zerg in WvW… I said funny… not entirely function… but funny

Ision.3207:

SlimGenre.6417:

I’d argue that if the traits in the water line benefit you, then yes… if not, no.

I tend to trait my different ele builds based more around wanting certain traits instead of around the extra 100/200/300 pts in each line. It’s also nice if traits all work together… like vigorous scepter if you’re running s/d. Evasive Arcana if you’re using a lot of blast finishers. 30 in water and 10 in precision if I’m running a d/d aurashare. 10 in precision if I’m running a staff build with a lot of Glyphs and want the 20% CD reduction.

The nice thing about this game is you can tailor it to the style YOU want to play… so I’d turn the question around and ask, given how YOU want to play, do you think it’s necessary?

Slim thank you for your response, but more importantly, thank you for responding like a mature adult.

In essense, I think I am consider 20 in Fire for Fire’s Embrace, and then adding Elemental Shielding to my Earth line. I’m jusr curious as to whether that will grant me greater survivabilty than the 20 in water I have now.

Once again, thank you.

LOL… I’m in my 30’s, have a wife, a mortgage, a 401k… I’m too busy to be a childish kitten /p>

I’d argue that if the traits in the water line benefit you, then yes… if not, no.

I tend to trait my different ele builds based more around wanting certain traits instead of around the extra 100/200/300 pts in each line. It’s also nice if traits all work together… like vigorous scepter if you’re running s/d. Evasive Arcana if you’re using a lot of blast finishers. 30 in water and 10 in precision if I’m running a d/d aurashare. 10 in precision if I’m running a staff build with a lot of Glyphs and want the 20% CD reduction.

The nice thing about this game is you can tailor it to the style YOU want to play… so I’d turn the question around and ask, given how YOU want to play, do you think it’s necessary?

While I’m salivating at the thought of it, I think it would be hard for Anet to justify adding more combo fields to d/d or s/d or more finishers to staff, simply because it would get rediculous how much you could stack. So another question of course would be, what would we be willing to give up? I’d be willing to give up, I don’t know, say some percentage of our potential damage output, or lower overall vitality? They’d probably have to take something away to give us something back.

My dream would either be a light field for retaliation stacks… which there was a number of light based skills for ele in GW1 like Ray of Judgement, a lot of which have been transferred to the guardian class…
or I would like a poison field for weakness… although I don’t know which attunement poison field would make sense it… certainly not fire, water or air… maybe earth??

Oh well, we’re just dreaming here

You have a max of 3 finishers in staff (if you count Evasive Arcana and Arcane Wave)… you have a max of 6 finishers in s/d and 4 finishers in d/d. Could you imagine if a s/d had 3 or 4 fields on top of that… so much utility… sounds great to me, but probably wont happen…

a guy can dream tho, right

Shimond.2478:

There’s a lot more to the game than that, however. And don’t even try soloing like that, it’s a royal headache (I should know, I did it for 45 levels at launch).

Oh man… ele at launch ?!? What a nightmare that was before any of us knew what this class was really all about

LOL, map chat is where people practice being a smart kitten so I wouldn’t worry about that.

FROM ONE OCD PERSON TO ANOTHER

I will agree that you should play the game the way you want to… however, this class was designed to dance between attunements, so while it’s perfectly fine if you just love using one attunement, you are handicapping yourself, and don’t let your OCD be the reason. In fact, if you think about it, the way ele is organized is PERFECT for the OCD person.

As someone who has struggled with OCD myself, I actually appreciate the attunement changes simply because it helps me gain control over a situation… and OCD is not about things all being at right angles to each other, it’s about the need to maintain discipline and control over your life.

Instead of thinking of ele as requiring swapping away from something to get something else, think of it this way. As an ele you have 25 skills at your disposal. 25 skills all sitting on your screen at the same time is extremely disorganized. Anet took those 25 skills and organized them into 5 file folders… 4 of those folders contain your main skills, broken down by category, the other file folder includes the utility skills.

Can’t get much more organized then that.

Baladir.2736:

Baladir.2736:

SlimGenre.6417:

……. Unless you just stand there and take a beating, then as you progress with your skill you wont need to spec heavily into toughness, vitality or healing power… but you will always keep some there. …….

Omg lol. You said that outloud. Good for you. The GW2 world seems so tied up in p/t/v. Everywhere you look it’s p/t/v. Legendary weapon stats lol, p/t/v.

I run a high crit-high vitality build. I use the crits to generate high endurance regen for virtually bottomless dodges. High vitality ensures I can take big hits.

The point he is making OP, and I am trying to, is that there is more than one way to accomplish the same ends depending on how one likes to play.

I actually felt I was a little rude and rewrote my response, but yes, I did say that… sry

I’d actually be interested in your high vigor build, I’m looking for something to change it up a bit. I do run vigorous scepter which increases endurance regen, but I run a high vigor build on my shatter mesmer and love it, and I do so much dodging with ele anyway that I’m always looking for a way to enhance that.

A Prec/Vit/Crit Dmg gear set would be nice

I live and die by blast finishers

my main set is P/V/T from AC, a couple FOTM rings from drops (one’s basically PVT and I can’t remember the other’s stats lol). The rest of my gear is exotic crafted zerkers and my scepter and daggers are CoF zerkers. My staff is AC Prec/Vit/Healing Power (but I run a very specific staff build in wvw)

My “current” favorite build…

S/D with 15/0/0/25/30. If you can’t maintain 25 might stacks, you can’t ele J/K

…actually I’m not kidding…

Might comes from blast finishers. I actually don’t run Spell Slinger because I don’t run any cantrips (mist form is for kittens). 18 AoE might stack chain in s/d, and then cycle back for another 18 as soon as you can. Easy to maintain 25 stacks without Spell Slinger on cantrips if you’re good.

If you are running cantrips, then spell slinger takes you to an immediate 25 stacks on yourself, 18 on the whole party, but I’ll take extra dmg output utilites over cantrips any day, and it’s plenty easy enough to hold 25 stacks without them.

I’ll also sometimes run a 0/15/0/25/30 build and load up on Glyphs. Might stack chain then drop Sandstorm to blind everyone you just beat the crap out of… swap to air and flashbang them with a dodgeroll to blind them again… priceless.

@Baladir

Thank you for saying this. So many people run the 2 or 3 basic cookie cutter builds thanks to the forums… which are a great way to teach you how to ele and learn to make your traits all compliment each other, but few seem to expand out from there.