Guild Wars 2

Odd.
I once though about using Focus / Focus. Also, what if you were left handed?

Allie Murdock.8152:

We talk to players of all skill levels. We closely monitor these forums, on top of what Jonathan said in SotG. As mentioned earlier, it’s not uncommon for devs to discuss these things in-game as well.

This may be surprising to some of you, but we’re capable of judging objective vs subjective feedback. It’s ingrained in our minds to analyze feedback this way (that is, after all, a huge part of a Quality Assurance testers job). It’s part of the process in game development.

It might not seem this way sometimes, but we definitely hear you.

steps back into the shadows

So … does anyone from Anet ever play from Australia or other such lag rich countries to see how they could improve certain skills. For example, Ride the Lightning (/D air 4 on elementalist). With the nerfs to this skill (40 sec cd if you miss) you hardly ever have a 20 sec cd on this skill due to it missing due to lag. There are many other examples of lag affecting the game and skills as well.

In the end, just wondering if any of you have personal experience with how the lag affects the game, or if you have “players” from Aus in you band of buddies.

Thanks in advanced, an Australian player who deals with the lag everyday.

runeblade.7514:

TGSlasher.1458:

Harrier.9380:

aydenunited.5729:

runeblade.7514:

Not sure what other players mean but AoE damage is a big problem to pet users.

You use a AoE attack, now all my pets are gone.

According to the argument here in this thread, it’s your pets fault for being around while AoE is happening.

That silly AI needs to L2P.

Those NPC’s in a Player vs Player. I usually play S/F ele. How do I get the full effect of my aoes? By dropping Dragons tooth on you and running at it so your pet gets hit, and you if you stay.

VS rangers I basically projectile destroy then refelct and get up nice and close to AOE their pets away. If you don’t move away from me, and continue to stay within aoe range of you and your pet then you need to stop just standing there kitten ing about.

Thats the problem.

Dragon Tooth does insane damage on a 6 second cooldown, while pets barely have the hp to survive many AoE attacks on a 30+ cooldown.

I would prefer if dragons tooth hit you instead of your pet, I can just walk past it while it flails about not hitting me (or burns itself on my fire shield on the odd chance it does).

aydenunited.5729:

You respond awfully defensive, as if this entire AoE debate is somehow about your specific Ele tendencies, which it isn’t. It’s about AoE in general, and you are starting to come across as if you are only defending AoE so much because you happen to use a lot of AoE.

I’m just saying that’s how it’s starting to come across, I could be wrong.

I responded defensively to the way you responded to me, as if personally saying you have to stand off the point while I aoe the crap out of it. Stand on the other side and my aoes will miss.

There are some AoE skills that cover the whole point, or if not all the a large chunk, that I won’t deny. But you have to remember, I they nerf that AoE they need to think of the skills / weapon skills they nerfed. For the staff on the ele, nerfing aoe nerfs the whole weapon as the whole thing is aoe.

To addon to my focus topic. I would like to add this idea:
Focus Trait:
Focus and Meditation:
All focus skills have increased duration of 1 seconds

Just an idea.

@CuRtoKy
I agree that a lot of the focus skills need work. The fire aura for 50 sec cd is just ridiculous. If it lasted 3 times longer, or if it conferred an extra bonus.
E.G.:
Gain a Fire Aura for 3 seconds and burn foes within 300-600 range. This punishes ranged foes for shooting you and double punishes foes for getting too close (something the focus lacks).

The air 4 skill is one of my favorites, however it doesn’t have a use outside of vs projectile range. Your suggestion for this one is interesting.

Personally I think of the focus as a weapon used to control a small area, as it does lack any movement skills.
As to air 5, I had an argument thakittens cd is worse then both the staff and /D. However, it is ranged (like staff, not like dagger) and its tell animation is harder to notice then the other 2. I think giving it the same treatment as the stakitten knockback would be a good start. Something like:
Summon a gust of wind between you and your foe. All foes in the way are knocked down.

What you do say is true though. The offhand dagger is a much better weapon and it is why it has much more mileage then the offhand focus. With so much defence potential built in, I would like to see bunker moved to the focus. Then Anet can stop nerfing /D for all other applications.

Focus Changes from:
Focus rework, the new bunker weapon?

TGSlasher.1458:

TL;DR
How would this change work?
Step 1: Remove Cleansing Wave from Dagger and replace it with Gust (chill 3 sec 20 cd)
Step 2: Put Cleansing Wave as Focus Water 5 and move Comet to Water 4
Step 3: Revert changes to Ride the Lightning, remake it a 20 or 25 cd skill but 1200 range

This allows the /D to maintain its damage and movement, whilst moving bunker to the Focus (the eles defensive weapon).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Focus-rework-the-new-bunker-weapon/first#post2380780

Demon.5082:

Interesting idea however the only minor issue I see with this is a D/D ele getting access to a lot of chill in water attunement. (3 skills which can chill heh)

I will think of some other ideas as well to improve the focus (I really wish it had some minor mobility/better fire skills for pvp)

I hope you do not mind if I link your thread in my own suggestions thread lol.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Suggestions-for-improving-fixing-eles/first#post2382521

No probs. I was talking to someone in one of my linked threads yesterday about giving comet to the /D instead of Gust.

@PinCushion,
Your name dictates your role :p. On a serious note, I run S/F in sPvP and have for quite some time. It defensive skills v projectile range (and even dps gaurdians) is brilliant. My build revolves a lot around toughness and blinds. If a warrior gets in range of me I basically summon dragons tooth on him to push him away, the save my blinds for his return. I did try to run full glass cannon with S/F (30 30 0 0 10 and 10 30 0 10 20) though it is not as good as the /D.

Last night I was polishing my build, running against a few other eles. The first was a S/D glass cannon with more defences then glass :/. That battle did not go good for me at all and after several tweeks to my build (mainly amulet changes) I had to submit to the better player. The second ele I versed was usually D/D but had changed to a fresh air build. I could tell he was new to the build and I rolled him the first few times. As he started to get better, the battles became harder, eventually we were basically on par. The difference in the builds was obvious though. The former ele used 30 arcane with /D giving him a metric crap tonne of heals. The second only had 10 arcane making his attacks hit harder, but without the heals of arcane he was easier to take down.

My personal experience with the focus is to not let your opponent get the upper hand. The build I run was designed to outlast D/Ds and eventually drop them. My build has been severely butcher since the diversity patch (too much cds on my signets now, cant get close to my old 100% protection, not to mention the bugs). To outlast my foes I play smart and I play with conditions (rabids or carrion, usually rabid for toughness, bleeds on crit). To kill eles I play smart, hard and fast (zerkers amulet, poison on swap). My basic tactic is to waist the enemies stun breaks / invuns.

Step 1, earth signet into dragons tooth (they will waist condition removal or teleport or invun)
Step 2 normal skills waiting for fire to come back (not waist air)
Step 3 KD into dragons tooth (that will never hit but hey, midas well make them think about it).
Finally sig of earth into dragons tooth going for a hit, then a swap for poision then force their heals out of them.

As to invulnerability, I only ever use invun when in a duelling situation or a very bad situation when on point, as it makes you not count towards cap. I never run mistform.

Focus lacks movement skills, but has defences build in. I believe that the focus should be build towards bunker even further then it is now. Your only escape with the focus is to kd your foe and run away and the only aid built in is chill and invun against melee (some better options against ranged, for a short period) as the focus has no built in movement (physical or swiftness).

Flagger:
Flag x enemies

Special Flagger:
Flag x enemies with a special flag equipped

[Event] Flagger: (e.g. Christmas Flagger, use snow man flags)
Flag x enemies with a special flag from an event equipped

Spartan Kick:
Use Kick to kill an enemy off a high place (e.g. catapult of clock tower)

Reverse Ninja:
Neutralise a point while a stealthy thief is nearby

Assassin Master:
Kill (down) a stealthed opponent

NPC Destroyer:
Kill x enemy NPC character (clones, pets, summons)

Illusion Master:
Down an enemy using Clones

Illusion Grand Master:
Down x enemies using Phantasms

Master of Fire:
Down an enemy without leaving Fire Attunement

Master of Water / Earth / Air → as above

Master of the Arcane Arts:
Down x enemies using all attunements during the fight

Conditional:
Apply 5 conditions to an enemy, the 5 must be present at the same time

No Guts No Glory:
Die due to fall damage

+1 I want to play the games with my friends. I was very disappointed I couldn’t do it at Halloween and at Christmas. Didn’t even bother with dragon bash (not to mention it didn’t count towards achievement until they fixed it) and didn’t bother with southsun coast head crab feast.

covenn.7165:

TGSlasher.1458:

@coven & BlackBeard
People called OP because some D/D players specced glass cannon and wiped the floor with an enemy expecting a bunker and wet noodle damage.

Oh I agree. People were definitely confusing bunker with cannons and combing the two. The resulting changes were due to the devs listening to the whines instead of paying attention to reality.

I want to apologize to the ele community though, because I believe I am responsible for one of our class changes. Killed an ANET tagged player several times the same way, and the very next day a stealth nerf (bug fix) went it. No more abusing that summoned weapon for me :p

Frost bow 5 for stun?

Adastra.9821:

Josh Mitchell.1596:

Arcane Power — Function Issue
Uses more than one charge for skills that inflict conditions or damage over time (Noticeable with Burning Speed and Churning Earth).

Every “hit” will take away a charge. So when any enemy walks into the burning trail on burning speed, a charge is used up. As for churning earth, this one has been fixed last time this skill (and sigils in general such as leech) were fixed. It’s a channeled skill that also applies cripple and it used to be that the cripple would also use up a charge, but this doesn’t happen anymore. If you hit 2 targets, it also counts as using up 2 charges.

Last time I tested this skill it only worked 4 times (using only lightning strike, no other skills, auto attack disabled). The buff may have ran out of duration though, not sure if I checked that, was more interested in crit damage spread at the time lol.

@ TGSlasher: There is a way to cancel cast channels: the ESC key is set to cancel skills. That is typical behavior of all channel skills. Push escape then your channel skill to start channeling on a new target.

Another way is to bind “put away/take out weapon” onto an easy to reach key and press that instead.[/quote]

I have mine set to X, same as wow / aion / GW1 (from memory), just frustrating lol.

No problems. I assume you mean projectile finisher for the ranger field one?

Jackums.3496:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The only class I’ve never heard as being “overpowered” is the elementalist.

I agree with the general premise of your post, but I laughed at the above.

There was a time when the else was considered under powered (considered worse the pre patch necros or current warriors). But it is true that recently, everyone flocking to the forums and copying the same build (as we see now with neckros), the ele has had its spotlight.

GW1 pvp, with priest to res everyone. Kill the enemy priest.

True
I have made a post about this on the forums now. I have been requesting this change for a long time, back when they were about to nerf RTL the first time.

Doesn’t Zerker Stance reduce condition duration by 100% but if you have condition duration gear it will still apply.

E.g. A bleed for 10 seconds (default) will be ignored by the stance.
The same bleed with +10% duration will apply a 1sec bleed to the warrior in the stance

Topic title takes influence from early Rurouni Kenshin episodes.

So, I want to make a push on the focus to make it a better bunker weapon. Currently the offhand dagger is the main bunker weapon. Why is that?

Lets look at the skills:
Ride the Lightning: An escape, or a gap closer, when things don’t go your way you can flee
Updraft: A blowout ability, usefull for keeping your foe on the ground while you heal up, or proceed to mole station
Earthquake: A second interrupt ability, again, stick you foe in the ground and do as you wish
Cleansing Wave: No good bunker goes out without his heal.

The offhand dagger has many good options to open it as a bunker weapon. The problem here is that the skills get nerfed, making other uses (S/D damage for example) suffer as well. While Ride the Lightning makes a good escape skill, having it combined with these other bunker type skills means that glass cannons trying to get away before their imminent death can no longer do that as often (due to the 40 sec nerf). Cleansing Wave also saw a nerf in its time, I think (if I recall correctly it had its healing coefficient toned down).

The Diversity patch was a step in the right direction. Now we see S/D Fresh Air builds as well as some of the vets sticking to the D/D build. I currently run a S/F build myself. The focus however, doesn’t have all that much love, or use within our Elemenalist brethren. It lacks movement, it lacks damage, its only advantage are the defensive skills.

Skill Breakdown:
Flamewall: A nice fire field, though not as coverage as our other weapon fields.
Fire Aura: Grant a fire aura (way to long cd on this guys)
Gust: A ranged chill and some damage, short enough cd
Comet: A predictive interrupt (don’t use in an emergency), give a 2 sec aoe daze
Swirling Winds: Projectile destroy, this skill is situational, not everyone takes projectiles with them
Gale: One of our best KDs, not much of a “tell” on this skill
Magnetic Wave: Reflect, condition removal and a blast finisher. What more could you want, while the reflect is situation, the rest of the skill can be used when not fighting projectile enemies, overall, my favourite ele skill.
Obsidian Flesh: Invulnerability, situational in pvp (don’t want people to cap the points on you, do you?).

The focus has some nice defences build in (more on the anti projectile side) but to really draw the crowds as a bunker weapon it needs something more. I have mentioned several times that if you were to move Cleansing Wave from the /D and stick it on the focus you would have a good bunker weapon.

How would this change work?
Step 1: Remove Cleansing Wave from Dagger and replace it with Gust (chill 3 sec 20 cd)
Step 2: Put Cleansing Wave as focus water 5 and move Comet to water 4
Step 3: Revert changes to Ride the Lightning, remake it a 20 cd skill but 1200 range

This allows the /D to maintain its damage and movement, whilst moving bunker to the Focus (the eles defensive weapon). Originally I thought of taking cleansing wave away from the /D and replacing it with a lesser heal. Today I thought of swapping with Comet, but that would give /D 3x interrupts and leave the focus with none. So unless creating some new skill, looks like Gust is up to the challenge.

Feel free to discuss these proposed changes, or ideas of your own to push some love into the Focus.

TL;DR
How would this change work?
Step 1: Remove Cleansing Wave from Dagger and replace it with Gust (chill 3 sec 20 cd)
Step 2: Put Cleansing Wave as Focus Water 5 and move Comet to Water 4
Step 3: Revert changes to Ride the Lightning, remake it a 20 or 25 cd skill but 1200 range

This allows the /D to maintain its damage and movement, whilst moving bunker to the Focus (the eles defensive weapon).

+1. More movement without having to pile on swiftness is required.

S/ is better to get range on your foe, and to apply dodge pressure (summon a dragons tooth and see who doesn’t dodge it).

D/ however is much better at fighting thieves and other cloakers. Once someone stealths and your using S/, you only have a limited number of skills that will hit Those skills are;fire 2 &3, water 2&3 and earth 3, rest are pretty useless. Earth and Water autos also work, but you have to rotate the camera to weird angles. All of the D/ skills will hit a cloaked thief (as long as you are within range). That applies pressure to they, do they stay and risk getting the crap rolled out of them, or do the leave? If they are ranged however, they will probably use the invis to kite you.

This has been fixed

Durzlla.6295:

TGSlasher.1458:

Take cleansing wave, put it on the focus. Take Comet, put it on the /Dagger. Revert RTL, bunker and movement issue solved.

You know what? You’re absolutely right….

They keep punishing the bunker side of /D. Why don’t they just take the defensive weapon (focus) and turn it into the desired bunker weapon. Then make the /D the damage / movement (roaming) weapon. It cant do both (they wont let do both) and currently there is no desire for the focus over /D. Despite that I still use the focus, it has its moments.

Some more tweeks would be needed, /D probably shouldn’t have 3 interrupts lol.

Ele Of Yo.6253:

Well, i know about death penalty in pve, but it’s more like having 0 death penalty and instantly getting 20% downed health or… in pvp… where there is no death penalty… Really hate it that full enemy team could rally of me because of being instant-killed in down (No illusion of life or any other buff that would kill me) Couldn’t even see a skill happen.
Trust me, if it was death penalty in pve i would notice, but it’s not a huge issue there. My problem is when it randomly happens in pvp.

I’m pretty sure there is death penalty in pvp. Eles used to complain about insta dying after using vapour form to escape when they had been downed before (you know, when eles were on the underpowered side, and people would only stop by our forums to sneer that thieves weren’t op).

Kodiak.3281:

That’s a cool alternative that you made work.

Personally tend to either go with Power with Precision (Crit) with Crit Damage or Power with Condition Damage with Condition Duration. Either build get a source of Toughness and Vitality (such as one from gear, one from spec). Not a huge fan of mixing and matching the two because Crit needs Crit damage to really pop out and Conditions really benefit from Duration.

TY. Condition duration isn’t all that useful in pvp where everyone removes conditions. My friend once put a 25 sec burn on someone, and watched them wonder off and die though, that was pretty cool. The default with this build is 20 fire, 20% condition duration, makes that imob long enough to not need the kd first. When not using fire I usually go Air 5 (kd) then switch to fire, start dragons tooth then imob then phoenix.

You are right, crit does need crit damage tough. That’s why I like zerkers. With the current meta I use melendrus runes (due to the lack of condition removal in the build itself) but if their weren’t conditions flying left right and centre it would be divinities for boosts everywhere and more crit damage.

I have also run this build with rabids (10k hp :/ each heal [heal + trident] is almost all my health). Problem is, without having a on crit get bleeds sigil you kind of lack in the condition department unless spaming earth auto attack (not usually the best idea). To be an absolute horride condition man, replace sig of water with sig of fire, imob your target, wall of fire (finally fixed) then earth auto threw it to pile up the burning. When they clear the burning hit them with your fire signet.

Playing a S/F ele, each skill counts, the only ones you can afford to smash are dragons tooth (6sec cd, good to put on some dodge pressure), fire aura (when not wanting to use a signet) and your autos. If going water to air, remember to use shatterstone one your way, as Air 2 and 3 are instants. Running away is not really an option, you either kill the enemy or choose to run before they attack you (hoping they go for point cap and not your soul).

And I was hoping it was only signet of air. Can’t believe I didn’t notice this sooner, you know because I’ve been using signets since Januaryish lol.

No fix for Signet of Air. I would much rather it have it cd reverted to 20/16 and stun break removed instead of this bs 30/24 where written in stone makes it still 16 and then lose the passive for 8 seconds. 8 Sec of not having 25% movement speed with a focus = dead.

Edit:
Does anyone know if the Shatterstone / Firewall fix work when casting a non auto attack after. If so then this is definitely a good fix. I will be able to retry fresh air and not just almost kill thieves but rip out their innards and lol as they lie face first in the ground stealthed, thinking it would help them

Take cleansing wave, put it on the focus. Take Comet, put it on the /Dagger. Revert RTL, bunker and movement issue solved.

Josh Mitchell.1596:

@ Strang: Yes RTL is very buggy with larger targets and I have still noticed getting stuck in the ground infrequently.

If by buggy you mean you get stuck in the ball of lightning for its full duration when used against a boss?. This also happens with Dagger earth 3. You get stuck in the pull animation against the bosses hit box, but doesn’t actually hit so the skill keeps you stuck there.

Josh Mitchell.1596:

@ TGSlasher: There is a way to cancel cast channels: the ESC key is set to cancel skills. That is typical behavior of all channel skills. Push escape then your channel skill to start channeling on a new target.

That’s a work around :/. Still would be good to be able to cancel auto attack channels either on enemy kill or on pressing 1 again. Since you cant have 2 actions per button (macro) this would be a good implementation I’m sure for multiple classes. Trying to fight someone in pvp and having to reach for the escape key, it is probably quicker and safer to allow the skill to cancel (I have a gaming keyboard, pressing esc can end in all sorts of death, I also intend on getting a G13, no esc key as far as I can tell).

Josh Mitchell

1596*Cleansing Water* — Function Issue/Tooltip Issue

• Does not remove a condition due to regeneration granted by Dwayna runes.
• Does not remove a condition from external regeneration sources. (e.g. Ranger’s Healing Spring)

• Does not remove a condition due to regeneration granted by Dwayna runes.

^Was this tested PvP or PvE?
-Has a cooldown of 5 sec in sPvP, from wiki.

• Does not remove a condition from external regeneration sources. (e.g. Ranger’s Healing Spring)

^Cross this part off your list. Re-read skill:
Cleansing Water
Remove a condition when granting regeneration to yourself or an ally
Not when granted regen.

KarlaGrey.5903:

TGSlasher.1458:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Sharing helps the community grow, and the attitude displayed above seems to be the thing on GW2 (and with scrubs on GW1), where – ironicly – build diveristy is but a far cry from that of its predecessor.
In GW1 heydays, you’d see lenghty in-depth guides and analyses of various builds as well as strategies by multiple top teams, and yet guilds would STILL manage to innovate build- and tactics-wise for the actual tournies, while here you instead see people whine to no end how ‘their build’ was stolen. Besides, if you made a certain build, I am certain you ought having the confidence to be able to use it better than any ‘copy cats’ out there, rite.

At the end of the day, you should consider it a compliment your builds are considered good enough to be used to start with.

On topic, those warrior builds are SO cheesy it’s not even funny. CC spam ftl :’c

In GW1 I saw people not taking player in their group if they weren’t running the exact build they wanted. I saw people not taking anyone under rank 5 or 6, no way for lowbies to ascend.

That has no direct relation to the facts I listed though. Some guilds innovated more than others, and some were more successful while innovating than others.
Perhaps things were different if GW2 wasn’t so deprived of diversity.

I agree with this statement, GW2 needs more build diversity. As it stands my pvp friend will not pvp due to having to run the correct build to win. He finds the play style of tourneys to be bland and I agree with him. I have been running a non FOTM build on my ele since the game was released, every build I have used has been of my own creation. Yet to do tPvP I have to deviate from one of my builds, and focus down a more narrow path. That’s just boring. If I wanted to play D/D ele all day long I would have bought “D/D Elementalist” instead I brought Guild Wars 2. Yet I got D/D Ele, No Warrior, and All Necro Feast 2009 bundled into the one game.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Sharing helps the community grow, and the attitude displayed above seems to be the thing on GW2 (and with scrubs on GW1), where – ironicly – build diveristy is but a far cry from that of its predecessor.
In GW1 heydays, you’d see lenghty in-depth guides and analyses of various builds as well as strategies by multiple top teams, and yet guilds would STILL manage to innovate build- and tactics-wise for the actual tournies, while here you instead see people whine to no end how ‘their build’ was stolen. Besides, if you made a certain build, I am certain you ought having the confidence to be able to use it better than any ‘copy cats’ out there, rite.

At the end of the day, you should consider it a compliment your builds are considered good enough to be used to start with.

On topic, those warrior builds are SO cheesy it’s not even funny. CC spam ftl :’c

In GW1 I saw people not taking player in their group if they weren’t running the exact build they wanted. I saw people not taking anyone under rank 5 or 6, no way for lowbies to ascend.

If you must know I do share my builds, and the OP aspects of the class I play when I find them (such as ele signets “doubling” up when using written in stone before patch).

What I don’t like is that you can just nick someone’s build willynilly. The way the GW2 meta develops is:
Step 1, play my class, lose to another class
Step 2, reroll that class jump onto forum and find “it’s” build
Step 3, check spvp forum to see that everyone is complaining about that class and build.
Step 4, defend the build, hoping to hold onto what little power you have till next patch.
Step 5. Did someone say Neckros?

I have played ele since week 1. I remember when everyone stopped playing ele because it was under powered. I remember when everyone flocked to play ele due to a single build.

I do agree sharing builds and guides can help players and the community grow. I have committed a fair amount of time helping other elementalists in their quest to not be underpowered. I have also put up a few pvp strats, not that anyone ever reads them lol. In fact, if it had not been for the D/D dapheonix build I would not have unlock the power potential behind D/D and would still be running a 0 0 10 30 30 build, instead of a power house 0 15 0 25 30 that I ran a fair while ago now.

Back to the topic at hand.

Would not bolas be a good addition to this arsenal, over kick?
Personally if it was me, I would probably go kick, most of my warrior builds are kick. Why? To Spartan kick people off the top of clock tower. But bolas would make it easier to chase people or to put dodge pressure on. (also I play ele with focus …. focus doesn’t have a reflect, I swear it by the god of fire Balthazar himself).

Permanent skin unlocks could be a good thing.
When you open a chest and get a new skin (not unlocked before) a reward screen (like the pve solo mission complete) screen could appear:

“Soldier, take this new gear, pretty yourself up and get back to the fighting! " – voice over

And the gear you unlock could appear as an item only preview with arrows back and forth (incase you opened a metric crap tonne of chests at once).

PvP weapon locker requires a single tab bank for pvp only items, such as arcane converters and spare skins. I have broken down all my doubles, guess what, I also accidently destroyed the doubles I wanted to keep :/. Oh well, my Ele has a Halo Needler.

I also believe there should be an extra bag slot for pvp only items in your inventory, only visible in pvp. So when I leave the mists I don’t have to delete 5 bazillion things to get space (1 of each amulet + a spare gear set + a spare rune set + Amulets with non stock gem + Change of weapons) Half of my bag space is pvp gear that I cant get rid of (I can but I need it for pvp).

It would be cool if all 1 handers had 2 slots, so you could have 2 of the same skin stacked.

Phaeton.9582:

In an ideal world I’d have the vid prepared for this post, but in light of the people furiously trying to reverse engineer it on NA I thought I’d just post it up.

Started running it when the patch notes were leaked, and was immediately surprised at the way it plays versus good players, especially when dealing with engineers and necros. After the patch came out I tried combining it with new traits (such as cleansing ire) however I think you’ll find this to be far more effective. Most undiscovered builds are counter-intuitive, much like the axe GS (arms-less 30/0/0/10/30) burst build I started running in march, which is now well established in the burst warrior meta (I don’t know the details on its usage before then, everyone was probably there before me).

Anyway here it is, I’ll try posting a more in depth guide later, along with some vids of it going up against top players.

There are two, one balanced build and one specifically versus high condi/low cc (excluding fear) teams.

‘Balanced’ CC Cleave

‘Balls of steel’ (anti condi) CC Cleave

Reverse engineer? You mean spectate, click on traits / gear and copy down what you have. Oh you beat me with that build, copy paste, now everyone has that build lol. What if I want to keep my build private? I cant gg.

official.4658:

So i’m just curious why players have to do all the work setting up tournies Leagues?

didn’t Anet say they were gonna set up daily/weekly/monthly tournaments with prizes?

I know gw1 had them why cant Gw2 shouldn’t the next step from gw1 be creating a better pvp environment not a worse one? What ever happend to once we get the ball rolling lots of thing will come …. well i think the ball has rolled to china and back by now

Kind of confused why they are just sitting back doing nothing while the game dies more as usual that’s all

Ps – i hate qqing but apparently they need to hear these things

The ball never got rolling. They tried and it got caught in the red tape of NCSoft.
Someone Not ANet: “Hey, lets make custom arenas for release”, “Yea, that would be pretty cool”
Someone Not NCSoft: “Custom arenas, how much would that net? Not as much as RNG chest, as much as we like GW2, we want to expand our other games instead, so give us your money or we wont publish the game”
Someone Not ANet: “You do know this is the pvp divison —-” his words were cut by the Someone Not NCSoft: “RNG CHESTS!!!!!!”

And that’s why pvp is so under represented or cared about by Someone Not ANet.

Warning flavour text, not to be taken seriously.

Devildoc.6721:

Conncept.7638:

In my opinion one small change that could make a huge difference would be to just double the amount of charges and get rid of the second weapon, then make the ‘Conjurer’ trait cause a second weapon to drop. Or don’t, since dropping one on the ground is rarely useful anyway.

A bigger (and in my opinion better) change would be to make it overwrite an attunement. The atunements all do different things, and every build except a full on arcane has at least one attunement (usually air) that is largely useless. Just cause conjured weapons to override the current attunement for their duration, and you solve not only a lot of problems with conjured weapons but so many problems with builds that focus more on one or two attunements.

Giving a conjured Ice Bow or Greatsword to a Warrior by your side is some serious damage. There’s great benefit to having a second conjured weapon for people. One person just had an idea that picking up the second conjured weapon right away just doubled the timer on your current one and gave you double charges, so if you want to get full use, then you’d just pick it up right away rather than the current system where you have to use up the charges on the first, then pick up the second way back where you cast it and probably someone else picked it up already.

They could just make the skill cast turn into another skill. E.G. Summon Frost Bow, summon a frost bow for use to rain ice upon your foes. Once summoned the skill would become Frost Splinter: Manifest power from your frost bow to bring forth a second bow on the ground. This move would “splinter” uses from the main bow. So you would start will all uses, using this second skill would halve your charges left from the main bow.

This would allow you to have a metric crap tonne of charges (esp with trait) but also allow you to give it to your friends if you wanted to,

I don’t take mist from because it removes you from counting toward the point. Also, focus invulnerability is 1000x better.

I’ve gotten over tourneys. Used to play with my friend all the time, but its so build restricted. Now we just mess around in 5v5s and pve :/. Might hit you guys up sometime, though being an aussie makes it nice an fun to find people on at the same time.

Psybunny.8906:

Kaon.7192:

Completely agreed on all points, especially the ridiculous implementation of the burning proc traits for engy and necro.

Totally agreed.

Good thread and well written posts OP.

That’s a lie, a well written post would have had more spacing (paragraphs) for readability. But that’s just nit picking :p.

I do agree that there needs to be some kind of boon or condition to reduce condition damage such as there is protection for damage. ATM there is Melendru runes, taking away your runes and 60% cleanse on crit taking away a proc sigil.

flyingfox.6150:

I’m using Ruby and Beryl orbs too, so far I haven’t felt any runes that is cost effective enough to make a big difference (sorry, my character is poor). If you have the gold, go with Scholar.

I just reached 80 not long ago, also poor. I went for adventurers to get a free dodge per heal (pretty cheap I know) Could have got full scholor but wanted to save moneys for a much better gear set.

Red Jay.2516:

tl;dr: Rework useless skills, make Conjures tied to specific attunement (like FGS – fire attunement) so we can still switch to other attunements (still can use ; to drop the wapon) and give us ineresting traits to spec into, like 10 sec of protection when conjuring an Earth Shield.

This. I mentioned the tie conjures to attunement on most other conjure related threads. Basically, when summoning a Frost bow it would replace water attunement. You would still be able to drop weapon as you currently do to ditch the weapon and get water back. More traits for conjures wanted. And removing charges but keeping time limit as well.

If they must keep charges then we need an attumenet specific trait for charges. E.G. Fire, gain 10 additional charges for conjure weapons, FGS can be summoned on the move, FGS and Fire Axe deal area burning at summoned location. Air Gain 10 charges for conjure weapons, Lightning Hammer area stuns at summon location … etc etc. The charges do not stack across traits.

@coven & BlackBeard
People called OP because some D/D players specced glass cannon and wiped the floor with an enemy expecting a bunker and wet noodle damage. I used to run 0 15 0 25 30 with zerkers and divinity, I did not hit like a wet noodle and the build made up the defences I needed. Not only that but all the

D/Ds keep complaining about stun break losses on cleansing fire and lightning flash. Did any of you use them for stun break? LF + CE totally stun breaker. I used to use LF to mix up my foes. RTL into Updraft …. predictably … Lightning Flash into updraft troloolooolo. Switch to fire now, burning speed into fire grab …. to predictable … fire grab when foe is not burning and popping cleansing fire, lol. How many of you know that cleansing fire applies burning and can be used with fire grab?

How many of you can claim to have beaten D/Ds or made them run with their tails between their legs using D/D yourself? While I never went up against the very best of D/Ds I did make it quite clear to anyone in hotjoins using the build to go home and rethink their builds, because I do not want any of their death sticks.

Why 15 air? Lightning bolt on air swap. Attacking a guardian? switch to air, say good by to aegis, teleport, say goodbye to second aegis updraft … no aegis sorry guys.

Ah the memories, good old 0 0 10 30 30 staff with a 0 0 10 30 30 D/D back at release, go to center, take on enemies 5-8 zergers, laugh at your invulnerability (until getting backstabbed lol). Go into tournies, win 4(us)v5s 2 rounds in a row, laugh. Get nerfed, continue to use a similar build, get nerfed again, change d/d build to beat other d/ds. Then hear about signet changes, switch to S/F signet aura build and not look back.

PinCushion.7390:

TGSlasher.1458:

It is caused by queing skills after shatterstone.
Try turning off water auto attack and not performing a skill until it appears (that includes changing attunement as that attunement’s auto attack will happen).

The same thing happens with Flame Wall on Focus.

Indeed, same fix as well. I play focus on my pve and pvp character and can tell you that not having firewall appear as I cast dragons tooth into phoenix into change for earth 4 blast finisher is so frustrating.

Demon.5082:

This is exactly what happened to me post patch. I did not go full glass but I altered my traits (dropped water) to get fresh air. The mindless spamming of atunnements to proc fresh air and the loss of hp/heals is just not worth going GC on ele. Stick to 20+/30 in water/arcana if you want to be able to kill anything while being focused.

I have been running 0 water and only 10 arcane for a very long time (since the first buff to signets). I have also been using the focus and zerker amulet. With this build I was able to beat the FOTM d/d builds though had to change amulet to beat anyone else. New meta I’m using rabids I think or maybe still zerker (I mix and change a lot always have 1 of each on hand).

For pvp, the staff is more of a support weapon. Not that anyone uses it lol. And the people I have seen using it scale from 1 (I can kill you so easily it isn’t funny) to 2 (I can’t even get a good shot in, while you will kill me eventually this is going to last a long while).
There is no middle ground. The build that I can’t get a good shot it in similar to the one listed here, and played by my friend who has ran that build in pvp since release. I have beaten him in a 1v1 duel situation once and that was by being a kitten trap ranger and hitting him with double traps lol. D/D bunker, unlimited fight, D/D destroyer of D/D unlimited fight, D/D GC I lose, S/D selfish aura -> unlimited fight, S/D fresh air GC -> I lose. Before the EA blast finisher nerf, that build was invulnerable the only thing that would bring it down was a lucky Mug – Backstab combo performed at the right moment.

As to trident, I previously thought it was slightly lesser then cleansing wave. Turns out when you switch from a lot of healing power and /d to not so much and /f you kinda think that the better one is worse lol.

The best part of a support staff ele in pvp is that it can cover the point in aoes while it dodges around giving out free heals to anyone that needs them.

Also, AFAIK geyser heals 3x although it lists 2, so it heals for ~3399 + 2585 + 1292 = 7276 every 20 seconds, if you cycle enough ~3399 + blast finisher heal? + (2585+1292) x2 every 20 seconds. 11153 + blast finisher heal (eruption) 1579, = 12732 total.
That’s if you could manage to stay in geyser and geyser does heal 3 times not 2 as listed (not sure on this).

Technically this applies to your heals: 2731 + (2585+1292)x2 = 2731 + 7754 every 20 seconds = 10485.

“In the mists with full clerics on and the standard 0/10/0/30/30 you can heal:
Water Trident – 2731
Cleansing Wave (Dagger 5) – 2585
Cleansing Wave (Evasive Arcana) – 1292
Healing Ripple – 2585

Altogether thats – 9193 healing every 40 seconds for that full rotation. " -Raif
You only calculated using trident once and Cleansing wave (EA) and healing ripple once lol. You could use it ~3-4 times.

Staff: As by your rulings
Geyser – 3399
Cleansing Wave (Evasive Arcana) – 1292
Healing Ripple – 2585
Blast finisher heal – 1579

3399 (G) + 1579 (erupt) + 1579(arcane) + 1292 (EA) + 2585 = 10434 which does not include the healing rain and its blast finisher (as to your logic, only using each skill once).
Again, that takes into consideration that Geyser heals 3 times and you can stay in the field for full duration. The healing value are going off gear that I could find closest to your heal values I think my heal values are slightly higher. I also don’t count waters auto attack of 500 heal (as you don’t auto attack as an ele lol). Also doesn’t count regen but that’s trivial. If geyser was to heal 2x it would be 1133 less heal 10434 – 1133 = 9301 which is still more but you need to stay in geyser for 2 seconds.

The biggest thing that the staff ele brings to the table is condition removal. 6 conditions when staying in healing rain (2 per 3 seconds), what’s annoying is that it should be 8 as healing rain lists 4x regen but only applies 3. Remove 2 conditions from self and 1 from allies when healing, Water dodge, change attunments removes 2 (if traited to remove as well as regen)

Staff also brings extra duration on frost aura. S/D gets 7 sec according to GW2skill (not in game atm) and staff gets 5 sec (from blast finisher according to wiki) + blast finisher before 5 sec of frozen -s-o-i-l- ground is up (none of that no res bull here) for an additional 5 sec netting around 10 sec to all allies nearby.

There is almost no argument here, staff is amazing in a group combat situation. S/D is a better solo weapon set and S/F is a good support v ranged set. Even when there is 1 Staff support ele and 1 S/F selfish aura ele in spvp (hot joins) you get called the Troll eles

BTW, your healing per 20 and healing per 40 is much higher if you used the skills more then once :p.

Arc Lightning And I suspect most other channel auto casts
When using this skill and killing a foe early in the channel then changing targets, the skill will still channel for full duration doing no damage until you either interrupt it or wait for it to cast again. Need to implement a way to interrupt channel auto attacks by pressing the skill again (1 by default) so they can cast from start again.

Alugjen Darlas.5329:

neva head any prob vs necros if u have enuf cc stun they will just die like little bugs.Ye is a l2p i agree with that. I do not agree with this thing of calling OP a class with no surv whats so eva .

You what mate?
Surv? Survival? Because that 2nd health bar isn’t survival.

S/D healing is not better then staff.
D has cleansing wave. S has trident which is less then cleansing wave from memory.
S/D has 1x crapier then cleansing wave heal and 2 cleansing waves (including EA trait)

Staff has 3 x cleansing wave (3x blast finisher) (this includes EA trait) + gyser heal (harder to use but it heals a lot)

EDIT: Most of these statements are incorrect, was me going off some old beliefs lol.

Kodiak.3281:

Polaritie.4851:

The Great Al.2546:

I like signets for a 20/10/10/30/0 build – activating a signet will give you and your party a fire aura, swiftness, fury, and protection. I think it’s a very underutilized support build.

I’ve been kicking around a 30/10/30/0/0 idea as well – permanent burning basically for the +10% from that, plus 10% for stone splinters, constant swiftness/fury from fire aura, etc.

Signets isn’t impossible. Elementalists are pretty good about being able to pick a skill type to build around. What isn’t possible right now is a single-attunement build (there’s not enough traits for one – if water spells were more powerful base, you might be able to do it for that with the vulnerability damage bonus and cooldowns, and I’ve considered a conjure build using attunement buffs since you can switch attunement while conjuring, but… it’s not viable atm)

So I thought about the exact same thing with my 30/0/30/0/0 build where I use Earth/Water/Air Signets.

The problem is the base Boon Duration of Swiftness/Fury from Zephyr isn’t enough that even if you rotated all your signets on cool down (which you don’t want to do) it’d never be enough to keep 100% up time because you have 0% boon duration from Arcane.

In the end I found the 20% cool down on Fire abilities much more useful because I’m almost always in Fire or Earth on this build (and I have 20% cool down on Earth too) coupled with 10 in Water for additional Condition management (can swap to Water to remove a Condition and also use Cleansing Wave for dual condition removal).

All in all I love the build if only because it’s viable in the face of all the claims of what is mandatory for an Elementalist.

I have been running something similar for a long time. With my old runes water earth monk you could get the boons to almost 100% with exact changes. Atm I run melendrus due to conditions. I run 20 10 30 0 10 with Scepter Focus. Heal, Air, Water, Earth in pvp and fire instead of water in pve (edit). The reason you had almost 100% protection (I mean very very close) was due to Airs previous C/D with Fire C/D, gaining ~10 sec off the total c/d of the signet summon. This patch gave me a stun break, but also nerfed my build (I count losing 100% protection a nerf over a lowsie stun break). With Water Monk Earth you get around 50% protection duration, that’s almost 5 sec of protection on each signet + about the same for earth swap.

I do not use condition damage for this build for several reasons: 1. I don’t like getting hit, so I dodge appropriately + use the focus’s defences. 2 I like big numbers (should probably play a different class lol) but when you imob someone into a dragons tooth / phoenix combo then switch to air for a KD and poison (poison on switch attunement) by they time they get up they have blown 1 stun break, and used a crappy heal (or blow a condition removal) and I haven’t even started on the defensive moves (2 sec daze, spell reflect / blast finisher / condition removal, invun – used only when not on point, projectile destroy, heal for half my actual heal lol). If I were to use condition damage it would be Rabids (for toughness) or Rampagers (for crit)

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

In general nearly no class make use of several signets. The maximum is ONE (excluding warrior). Since they buffed signets in the last patch, we can expect more buffs for them to make them viable in PvP. Also the synergy in traitlines for signets is not existing. Normally we have 20% CD-Reduction and that’s it.

Signet synergy is lacking, it is found in auras when going 20 fire. You also have 25% endurance on use and 3x vun on use. Both 25% endurance and 3x vun also work with arcane allowing for a mix. Changing the 10% crit damage on arcane use to also work with signets would be a nice boost.