Guild Wars 2

Magic isn´t a mark of sentience or intelligence in this universe btw.

Examples: elementals, wind riders, raptors, oozes….kittenton of gw1 mobs though they have scaled it down a bit, mostly for many mobs not being here in the firstplace.

There´s a charr cub whose whole strwaberry patch we can take, Asuran facility with potato field fully harvestable, bandit grapeyard up for grabs….

King, i know it´s because of that in general. What i´m asking why is it trolls and not any of the bazillion inelligent races there is.

….sigh.
Did we really need another one of these, there´s plenty more on front page where you could´ve expressed your opinions.

And then on the topic now that we do have yet another one of these.
Is ele hard to play? Yes. Is it played very differently to guardian? Yes. If you play guardian well does that mean youplay well with any profession? No. Is well played ele underpowered? No, not in pve atleast

Personaly i haven´t had single problem during my time as ele, be it taking multiple foes of higher level, big event bosses, hordes of mobs or even some champions (if they don´t have annoying skillsets that is)
If youwant advice, there´s multiple threads where there´s very detailed posts on what to do and how. (hint. use the search)

@ fixit

because spvp is onlything that matters….right

Luterin….no, just no.

If ele is broken in spvp, it´s broken in spvp, not in other completely different situations.

That´s like saying that because sugar tastes crap with steak, it always tastes like crap

Kreit.4709:

@Strang
So why do you speak about PvE if OP said about PvP? Mobs can be facerolled most time with any class.

Masternewbz.4953:

I dont need to explain, play 15-20 hours of Wv3 after lvl 80, play 15-20 hours of sPvp, play some PVE lvl 80 , do some arah runs and you will fully understand what I am saying.

There you go, i highlighted the part i was commenting on.

Nope, none stack.

Well the whole point of karma system was that people wouldn´t need to kill same bosses over and over for a chance of drop but they could just buy their rewards instead of counting on getting it as a drop.
Karma rewards for those bosses might be a bit low, that? the problem imho.

Do salvage anything white that give you cloth/leather, those sell well on tp.
Also salvage stuff that gives orichalcum and ectos, they sell even better.

…..ah, let me reword my question.

What does the thing in your OP have to do with any of this, it basicly reads:
Warriors can take more beating, and therefore elementalist is broken.

I can speak about pve though, as i´ve done that more than enough.
And it´s not broken. It might not be what people think it is, but it´s certainly not broken. You won´t find better support than well played ele, huge events are another thing eles shine in. Soloing is perfectly viable and if you can´t kill stuff just as fast as warrior then it´s not far behind, certainly it won´t take twice as long.

There is indicator….yellow “splash” on top of your UI when in combat.

It could be a bit more visible, but you´ll get used to it fast enough.

Masternewbz.4953:

again , whats ur experience?

I see that most ppl that defend elementalists either :

Have a low lvl one.
No experience in Wv3 , sPvp, Pve.
Dont have an Alt.
Want to look good.

I got 180 hours in my elementalists, Pve is doable but underperform when compared to warriors ( Farm twice slower ), and in Pvp Wv3 is just a support class. S/D and D/D u wont beat a good player on the other side who knows what elementalists tricks are.

Can´t be bothered to check my hours, and i haven´t done much pvp, but what i´ve done i haven´t felt as underpowered as people seem to feel they are.
I´m not saying that ele isn´t on the weak side, like i said, it might be a bit more than a bit.
And sorry if i don´t buy your i´m pro so you can s t f u attitude.

But i´m quite lost on what´s the logic of your complaint….care to explain?

Wait…..

You say you´re good with elementalist, almost never die, and you sometimes go glasscannon, which suggests you know how to do active defense pretty well.
And are upset that your warrior can …tank more? As in take more beating?

Ninja patch?
*tinfoil hat
They´re out to destroyyyyyyyy uuuuus!

Can anyone confirm this though`?

So since you play warrior better than elementalist it means that the profession is kitten?

It may be a bit, ore bit more than a bit on weak side in pvp, but certainly far from what some people would want everyone to believe.

Or check your traits.

*Hint: aura and cantrip builds

<edit> well not really combos, but still buffing at any rate.
Also, why shoulnd´t they be unevenly distributed? Do you want each weaponset to be practicaly same?

Yes, don´t fall in to thinking that healing is best support in this game.

It´s nice and all, saves few arses here and there, but still not best way to do suport.
Keeping mobs off of your team is the best support. 3aoe cc fields, 1 aoe swiftness, even more from utilities and traitts. That along the fact that you prettymuch can´t avoid from casting combo fields, meaning that nearly every and each finisher goes through one, granting massive amount of boons.

Healing is useful too though, but one needs to understand that in this game youshould overheal like there´s no tomorrow. If melee player engages a mobs they will start taking damage, so you should just drop healing field on top of them the moment they engage, with casting times they will have already taken damage before you´re finished casting.
Once you´ve used the water fields, though, never linger in water attunement, swap to earth or fire to deal damage and use earth and air to cc if necessary.

Ele not being able to take on multiple enemies is total bullkitten.

Every weapon set and most of the skills are aoes, and some rather big ones at that. This means that not matter how many enemies there are, we can take them down simultaneously, IF we can keep alive. Keeping yourself alivepart or rather people failing at it is what makes them say stupid stuff like ele not being able to handle itself in pve.

Now i know people love to claim that you need full defense gear, traits and skills to survive a single grub in cursed shores. They are wrong thoug.
I personaly love staves,arguably the worst weapon to farm with. And i´ve been rolling in full berserkers gear (not exotics, just random green stuff i got from drops) my whole playing time. Also i´m currently using the same traits i´ve had since when i was levelling, which is 30 fire, water and 10 air. And do i have any trouble at cursed shores? NO, i do not.
Now i´m not saying this because i think i´m awesome and rest should l2p (frankly i´m quite average player). I´m saying this to show that average player, with enough time to learn to handle the class, can farm cursed shores without any trouble, even with gear/traits that are far from ideal.

For advise part, i can only touch on staff combat, since it´s all i´ve played since release (like i said, i just love it).
Beforeyou start casting anything other than autoattacks, gather the mobs in to one big ball. Easily done with melee mobs, and if it´s not in the middle of large field full of mobs it can be donewith ranged too by skirting around the casting range. If there´s only few ranged mobsand lot´s of melee, try gathering melee first and then moving on top of the ranged mobs. To make gathering easier, use cc and dodges, don´t waste your shields/blinds. If your health drops below 90% go and practice it on lower levels, it´s possible without taking any damage if ranged mobs are absent, and with little damage if there´s few of them.
After you have your ball of mobs move in t actual combat phase. Now that you have your mobs, you will start nuking them down with aoes, use cc to keep them in place. Once they reach you blow your shield skills and blinds to gain bit more time for nuking and start dodging and ccing. What ever you do, try to keep mobs balled up and in your aoes as much as possible, even if this means taking hits from them. What´s helpful is to dodge through the mobs and back, this way you limit your movements to smaller area and mobs stay in your aoes longer.
All in all ~5 seconds to gather mobs and 20~ to kill them is usualy what i need.
In short, gather mobs, shield, set aoes and keep the mobs in those aoes.

Few awesome things for staff:
Glyph of storms, earth – 8 seconds of near invulnerability, us this and you can just stand still and nuke any number of mobs.
Arcane shield – 3 hits doesn´t sound like much, but it is, and damage isn´t that bad either.
Arcane wave – blast finisher and big damage, noms.
Signet of restoration – awesome healing skill…just make sure you never use the active.
Evasive arcana – lot´sand lot´s of blast finishers, with some damage and heal
Fire traits 30% longer fields + 20% cd reduction = near permanent lavafont = dead mobs
Bolt to the heart – awesome damage increase against event bosses/champions, that actualy spend lot of time under 25%hp
Vital striking – even more damage when in big events.
Note on above 2, never refrain from swapping major traits for events.
Water 15p minor is awesome heal and condition removal is traited.
Magnetic shield – is totaly awesome against ranged mobs, real life saver. Your oh, kitten button for ranged mobs.
Frozen ground – Your oh, kitten button for melee mobs.

My usual rotations after gathering mobs:
Start in earth, e5, glyph of storms, e2, swap to fire, f2, arcane wave, f3, move forward and then f4(so that it actualy hits mobs and still keeps them inside lavafont), f2 when off cd, f3.
If not dead after all that just kite a bit, maybe use aracane shield, and keep casting f2,3 and 4.
If it´s veteran, i started in fire instead of earth or something went wrong doing above and i start taking considerable damage, swap to earth, e4, e5, e2, swap to water, w3, w4 gain a bit of distance, w5, if arcane wave is off cd, use it in water field.

Why can´t we do it?

I know nobody else will see them and that it´s really just fluff. But still, if i want to have certain icons in my hero panel i should be able to.

Anyone have any stats on how well each of the damage types scales at lower amounts of stats?

By going support i´ll be already dedicating big amount of stats to healing, some more to toughness for survival and then i have limited amount i can put in either power or condition damage.
So does anyone know how well adding smaller amounts of condition dmg fare against going full power?

Also i might add that i want to min vitality and max toughness, so that my heals are more effective on myself, so +vit gear is out of question…which drops lot´s of item sets :/ (soldiers, shamans and carrion namely)

TGSlasher.1458:

Meteor is on boulder bundle isn’t it? Boulder 1 throw rock and kd, boulder 2 (ele only) meteor?

Sadly yeah,and even then on some boulders….seems bit random

It´s propably from when the mechanics might have been different, for example if there was other sources of attunements recharge, in which case it would´ve given more room to fiddle with numbers to do it the way it is now.

Correct me if i´m wrong but i recall hearing that healing doesn´t scale very well at higher amounts?

Supportive staff build, for all around pve including soloing.
Which stat to go with?

With power heavy gear it´s such a pleasure to blow through mobs.

With condition damage i´m afraid that killing things might slow down considerably, as most conditions on staff aren´t too quick to set up (and the fact i´d have to actualy swap away from fire more often).

As i´m not planning on going with max amounts of either options, which scales better at lower amounts, works better in general and kills stuff faster,anyone have any statistics or ideas?

I do agree with op, it just breaks the flow of combat. In the other hand you´re doing quick attunement dancing and skillcombos, then you´re suddenly limited to just waiting till the animation is done….how the hell are we supposed to react to that?

Seriously, what´s going on with these?

Lion´s arch jumping puzzle, dead troll in the middle of vegetable spawns.
Brisban wildlands, troll spawns and veteran trolls near vegetable spawns.
Bloodtide cost, champion troll near vegetable spawn.

I´m sure there´s even more than, can´t remember off the bat though, that but what the hell?

Windowlicker.6019:

blahblah blah

In short the class you picked isn´t what you envisioned, didn´t do things you wished, didn´t get updated like you hoped and isn´t the focus of first month as you had expected.

Now what this has to do with us is beyond me, but certainly those are all valid reasons for you to retire.

Split for pve/pvp?

In pve it certainly is pretty good, pvp i can´t comment on though.

What is it with the staff hate?

Staff is perfectly viable and powerful solo weapon along with everything else if played well.
It´s full of aoe, and that means that when you can keep yourself alive (which is easy with the repertoire we have there) no matter how many enemies there is, it´s as fast as taking one single mob.
You can take as many enemies at once as you can fit on a lava font aoe.

Indeed, why was it better? What wast the goal, and what was the build, and playstyle and situation and opponents?

Well we definately have had it rough here. We didn´t only have it bad from the start, it´s been getting worse and worse by the minute.
We are so underpowered now, that we are estimately 42cm below the powerpovertyline, compared to only 30 cm below when gw2 launched, that´s roughly 40% increase…or decrease…numbers!
I´ve also concluded that with the bug infestations (Lesser tyrian profession scarabs i assume, deducing from the reported levels uf unplayability they cause) we seem to suffer we´re doomed to wither away and die a lonely and gruesome death.

Well now allow me to tell you about my hobbies.
I like lurking other profession forums, it helps me to maintain a healthy and varied diet of qq, whine and sweet tears of fahrun pohsters.

And it has allowed me to observe the following.

Rangers have it worse than us on the numbers part, the recent nerf(that might or might not be of intended severity) of shortbow reportedly seems to have downgraded their efficiency even as much as 110%…how that is possible i don´t know but my sources are certain of this. There´s a great fear that not only does this lower them below the famed powerpovertyline, but that it does it so much that the results might be even as much as 50cm below.
They too seem to suffer from minor bug infestation, but reports suggest it´s only case of Ascalonian nerf lice.

Necromancers seemingly have it steadily above the powerpovertyline, but the constant fear of falling below it seems to suggest that they too infact are headed, or infact already are below it, reports suggest values between 10cm under and above.
What is certain though, is that they seem to have attracted many different bugs, again i can only assume, but reports indicate both lesser tyrian profession scarabs and ascalonian nerf lice, but i fear there might also be some dreaded greater tyrian power locusts in the mix.

Mesmers have it nearly as bad as us though, they are reportedly already atleast 25cm below the powerpovertyline, and quickly falling. This has caused mass panic and confusion, but one thing is clear to them all, only way is down and nothing can save them.
Similiar to us, they too do have a infestation of lesser tyrian profession scarabs, but maybe to a slightly lesser extent.

Guardians are like mesmert midst a great chaos, though they are well above powerpovertyline, the recent hit from nerf bat and following considerable drop in power has shook their beliefs, and fear is slowly taking over. Changes to their core being, greatsword skills, have left many wondering about future, powerless and unwilling to act lest there be repercussions. Also the omnious message left after the nerf bat beating, is concluded to be nothing else but the sign of apocalypse and the end of the world.
Bugs are no stranger to them either, with good supply of radiant valor roaches, they´ve begun developing cuisine based on them.

Engineers aren´t too happy either. Though they´ve shown some promise and growth of power, there´s evidence that they´re in the same limbo of powerlevel as necromancers, never certain which way it is today. They crave for more, but still it seems they remain forever doomed to remain under the powerpovertyline, as well as slightly above it.

Thiefs had recently a major crisis, not unlike what rangers faced. Their if not the most, atleast one of the most important skills to them got nerf bat treatment. This left many weeping and shuddering, but it seems that in the end it´s not as bad as what happened to rangers. Now that they´ve begun recovering, it seems that even if the nerf took them near the powerpovertyline, they still remain fair bit above it…but for how long. Recent developements seem to suggest that this was only the beginning.
Thiefs also seem to have caught rather nasty case of southern leet worms,but luckily no other bug problems.

So my dear fellow creatures, do not despair overly much (little bit is fine). We are not only ones that have it bad, indeed, it seems that we all got the short end of the stick, and are on our way to anguishing death, or atleast quickly heading to that directions, so let us all weep together, like some of us already do, as there´s tears of many different professions on each of the profession forums.

Warriors…yeah, they´re holed up in their perfect wonderland of happines and sunshine, but some times get jumpy about the few ladybugs scurrying around.

….Maybe we could go and troll them so that i could taste warrior flavored tears for a change?

TL:DR Nothing important, just pointless stuff for kitten and giggles.

Take the extra punch from equipment, basicly use trait points as a mean to get traits, not the stats that are tied to them.

Also, auras other than what you gains as a direct result of weapon skill (using skill that says aura, in the description). won´t spread through powerful auras as far as i know. I might be wrong though.

Alessia.7864:

Strang.8170:

So basicly…..
let´s do what we already do but without the hassle of learning to attunement swap?

Not quite. Let us use the abilities we want to use, not what happens to be off cooldown.

erhm…..if i need to explain to you why using skills just because they´re off cooldown is bad i´m not sure i´m willing to continue this conversation.

We can use abilities we want to use, cooldowns are there to balance it (let´s not delve in to wether it´s balanced right now or not). It just happens that there´s a system in place that requires us to use multiple sets of skills and swapping between them to achieve that. In exchange we have ability to change the skill chains we´re using even mid combo, to achieve various different results.

And no, we´re not going to get derailed into debate wether it´s currently less effective than what other professions get, that´s not the point here.

I use staff for soloing and it works like a charm, never had a problem with it be it events, story or just random mobs.
Just don´t try to be mr, untouchable…invest a bit in defense, 20-30 points in either water or earth will do, and just soak a few hits. Your damage depends on how well you can keep the mobs in your aoes, sacrifice bit of your hp to do that if need be.
Champions are ofcourse a different story, but if you can´t keep them off of you with all the cc staff has…i really can´t help you.

Few hints,
Take up glyph of storms and use it in earth, a lot. 8 seconds of invulnerability and even more time to nuke.
Arcane shield is awesome too, gives you chance to stop and nuke.
Magnetic shield is awesome against ranged mobs to give you time to nuke em down.
Try doding towards mobs just as they reach melee distance sometimes…it gives surprisingly good results (mob pathing or something…don´t really know)
Don´t needlesly swap around elements for swappings sake, think what you actualy need to use.
Sitting in fire is, contrary to popular belief, pretty darn good choice when you need consistant damage on stationary targets (hitn, glyph of storms).

And most of all, when you kite, don´t kite to survive. Kite so that the mobs stay in your aoes.

So basicly…..
let´s do what we already do but without the hassle of learning to attunement swap?

Having fun and not stopping anytime soon as far as i can see.

With the amount and quality of suggested elaborate “fixes”, overhauls, simplifications, redesigns and such i´d rather not have people even more….“constructive”

Cows go moo!
Mmo pvpers go op! up!
Elementalists go QQ

But that kitten is hilarious

Are you something like level 60 there?….

I just can´t understand. Are we all playing even the same game?

I can just facetank 2-3 of those swords, my gear is berserkers with few vitality trinkets. 30/10/0/10/0 traits, staff as weapon.
Start in earth glyph of storms, earth5, earth 2,swap to fire, fire 2, fire 3, autoattack fire2, fire 3….they´re dead after that.
With some kiting it´s easy to take as many as you can find around you.
If it´s 2-3 and i can actualy bother to move a bit i can sit in fire and take them down.

Whim of developers? Fact that it was a bonus?

Besides, there´s other enemies that seem to be killed but still are encountered further on. (Forgotten bosses in crystal desert for example are the same in all 3 missions before ascension).

It´s propably just that all the whining and moaning around here starts to get on everyones nerves.

Just learn the class and veterans are easy unless there´s more than 3-4.
Learn it well and champions are doable, but take kittenload of time, aka. not worth it really other than to boost your kitten, which i do quite often though.

Build isn´t critical, i levelled with 50/50 split between fire and water, using staff.

Not really anything nerf worthy, just “creative use of game mechanics” and a good player.

Makes me wonder though how some people seem to be of the mind that ele can´t take out 1 normal mob… :/

Played from BWE1 and i´m still enjoying it, a lot.

From what i remember from the blogposts before the launch, Kodan sounded more like spiritual extremists rather than spiritual wisemen….with all the stuff about will of koda and balance, and enforcing it by force if they see it necessary, or rather if their spiritual leader sees it fit (leader that can go and is known to have gone crazy)

But yea, propably not playable due to lack of customization and close resemblance to Norn… well untill Anet develops them further anyway.

Well it could be worse aguess, fiery greatsword and tornado could also lock us away from our profession specific mechanic….oh wait

Rhyse.8176:

ShadowbaneX.6273:

Can you get away with going heavy into Fire for Wrecking stuff or are we pretty much forced to play defensive?

Not really. Because of the cooldowns in each attunement, you really can’t stay sitting in one and do maximum damage. This is one of the class design issues (IMO, it should be fixed by reducing a 30 pt attunement to 5 sec cooldown in that attunement, so you can dance to that powerful utility and then hop back to your specialization), so Arcane is pretty much required ATM.

If you’re going to go staff, you don’t to go that route anyway. The power of staff is in it’s many possible self-combo fields, not in it’s direct attacks, so if you stay in one attunement you’ll just feel like a tissue paper ranger that hits like a wet noodle.

I´m pretty sure that with right traits you can sit in fore while doing maximum damage, though not much else.
+fire dmg, reduced cd and longer fields traits in fire line give you near constant lavafont, near constant burning (more than that if there´s ally firing trhough it), and on top of that meteor shower for big targets.
That´s ofcourse for stationary targets, but in normal pve you can make them stationary by facetanking with arcane shield and glyph of storms earth version ofcourse.

Naturaly in most cases it´s better to swap time to time(for cc, heals, condition damage), but if all you want is pure damage, then you can definately sit in fire if you have traits for it.

ShadowbaneX.6273:

So far I’ve leveled up a Guardian and a Mesmer and I’m looking into leveling up my Ele next.

With the support I’ve been doing so far, I just want to play a Staff Ele and just run around PvE wrecking stuff. I was planning on starting with 0/10/0/10/10 for up until level 40. At level 60 I was hoping to go 10/10/0/10/20 and eventually work my way up to 30/10/0/10/20. I’ve been seeing a lot of focus on Water, Earth & Arcane though. Can you get away with going heavy into Fire for Wrecking stuff or are we pretty much forced to play defensive?

When i levelled i just dumped all i had in to fire and water 50/50 split(last 10 in air) and had absolutely no problems even in orr.
All the dungeon runs i´ve done with that have gone smoothly too.

Ok,

We´ve yet to have a balance patch for ele after launch.
There´s plenty of elementalists that do just fine in pve and even in pvp
Many people are happy with how the ele playstyle is as it is now.

And still there´s some who outright demand complete redesign for whole class…..
very logical