Guild Wars 2

D/D is just the best designed ele weapon combo. It’s the only weapon without really easily avoided bread and butter attacks, like dragon’s tooth, lava font and eruption. The other weapons need strong snares, which they don’t really have, to hit with those types of skills. Focus has some of the weakest weapon skills in the whole game. Scepter is usually only good for bursting, and its burst can be unreliable without fresh air. Staff is just for groups, point bunkering or laying down damage and fields from off the point.

Dual dagger is the most self-sufficient weapon set, and it’s pretty much never going to be a terrible choice for a situation. Comparatively, any other weapon set is unwieldy.

Cen.8653:

since I can finally make a Charr Ele who looks good

prove it

Chaith.8256:

Don’t compare traits directly across professions. A condi necro burning you for 5s is very different than an Engineer burning you for 5s.

This is absolutely true. You can’t just make incendiary powder grandmaster and/or trigger on toolbelt skills.

Really, engineers shouldn’t even have a burn applying trait at all. At the very least, it shouldn’t invalidate their other sources of burning. Engineers should have to use blowtorch, bomb kit, flamethrower, rocket kick or flame turret to get burning. Powder beats every single one of those skills in terms of up-time and ease of application.

Necros never got the benefit of saying “I don’t need x skill to burn enemies anymore because of this burning trait,” so you really can’t compare dhuumfire to powder 1 to 1.

I know what the op suggests, but even that supposedly moderate change is asking too much. It’s actually not very hard to interrupt renewal before a single pulse occurs. We’re talking like 3/4 of a second here. Instant cast interrupts, like updraft and power lock, are very easy to do this with. Also, I don’t see a reason why people that react very quickly should be rewarded less than people that were slower.

If we’re talking about consistency, the suggested change would make renewal the only skill in the game that favors waiting for the effect to happen before interrupting.

jkels.6398:

2) No, my sigils are already set up for the patch. I was running force / battle.. I’ve switched to hydro / fire. ( yes i know they share the same CD right now. they won’t after patch) I really love hydro it hits HARD. I’m criting for 3-4k sometimes and it is soo powerful when you get your proc going into air or earth. I am considering loosing fire and using bloodlust as it puts my attack around 3,600 with gaurd stacks

You might not want to get comfortable with hydromancy if you just like it for damage. I remember seeing a dev post in the spvp section saying hydromancy is getting a damage nerf on the 15th. I believe he said it won’t scale with power and the base damage will be “low.” This was weeks ago btw, so memory might be hazy. However, I use the sigil myself, so it’s something I feel I’d remember correctly.

found it

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Hydro and Geo don’t scale with power anymore. Their flat damage values are very low now.

TyPin.9860:

scabrous.7835:

Also, fighting cond specs is not a battle of attrition they can burst almost as heavily as power specs.

That I don’t believe. I have never seen in practice a condition build causing 10k damage via burst. I am not even sure that is possible in theory. They can deal huge amounts of damage, after they have stacked up the conditions on you after time. But that is no burst. Please elaborate on your claim.

If condition builds really needed lots of time to build damage, wouldn’t sustain bunkers with good condi removal be the natural predators of any condition build? I mean my bunker ele has never died to a soldier anything, which people claim out-damages condition builds. For the record, I’ve run into power builds that I can literally tank (no, I’m not even talking about up-arrows here). There are times when I take a warrior’s full hundred blades and laugh. There are thieves that I let backstab me for about 5 or 6k. I have no doubt that gear differences play a role sometimes, but it still shows that power damage without significant trait and gear investment is not a threat. My bunker ele with 3 major traits that remove conditions, cleansing fire and high sustain healing still dies easily to condi necros and engineers. I would never stand there and let a condi build hit me with anything because even though I have traits and skills that should directly counter their build, I know I have to completely outplay them just to stand a chance.

I want someone to explain how conditions, a supposed attrition mechanic, can be balanced when a build that is meant to survive for long periods of time and cleanse conditions relatively frequently has more trouble with condition builds than any power build. Remember, this is about wvw, a place where people can break 2k condi damage.

Ether renewal removes 8 conditions and has the best consistent healing per second out of all the ele heals. Yet, people complain that it actually has counters and weaknesses. Without the full cooldown interrupt and long channel, renewal would be the most op healing skill in the game.

I hope anybody that wants the current weaknesses gone or diminished is ready to accept a quarter of the condi removal, a 30% healing reduction, a longer cooldown or any combination of the three.

Buffing or removing arcane precision is one of the countless common sense changes Anet will likely never do. Every class has really stupid minor traits, and Anet is just now getting around to the necro’s death magic minors.

Really, elemental contingency should be the gm minor. The numbers on contingency just aren’t good, and the boons are redundant with some arcana traits anyway. It would be nice for free, but will never be taken over something else.

For intelligence to be competitive with battle or hydromancy, what qualifies as an attack would have to change. The non-damaging cripple from churning earth eats a blind, so that’s an “attack.” One tick of damage from the burning speed trail is an attack. The entire channel of arc lightning won’t crit with the sigil.

D/D in particular has only 3 attacks you’d really want to guarantee a crit with, burning speed, fire grab and churning earth. 2 of those skills can eat the crit charges before the big hit occurs, and fire grab misses enemies that it clearly hits then goes a 45 second cooldown.

Vylor.3276:

snip

This guy is right on all points.

Frankly, I think the op is baiting ele complaints. There is no way a good build gets hit for 16k from a single attack while barely dealing more damage than healing signet heals on a stationary target. There are eles that are extremely difficult to kill for all the reasons Vylor listed plus some he didn’t. Burst eles can deal very good damage. If the warrior was really standing still laughing, only endure pain should have prevented a kill with 30 air magic. Someone that dies quickly while barely dealing damage is playing terribly, wearing green gear or both. Even taking Anet’s dubious balance decisions and love for warriors into account, this particular anecdote is definitely learn to play.

Also, thank you. Somebody else knows how good hydromancy sigils are for d/d ele. Most people just use battle for bigger numbers, but hydromancy does so much more for dagger main-hand while still dealing damage. I switched from battle to hydro many months ago and never looked back.

Chaosky.5276:

What I’m getting at is that if I want Protection and CC, I’m going to be switching to Earth, which means that there are going to be plenty of times when the attunement simply isn’t available to mitigate critical burst damage. Therefore, if I want to be sure to have access to it when I need it, I’ll have to restrict myself to Air and Fire, which is rather less than optimal.

I don’t take Elemental Attunement so I can switch to Earth to gain Protection in order to avoid incoming burst damage, because I can’t rely on having access to the attunement (although it’s nice when it does work out, and I’d much prefer it if I could activate the trait as I would a utility skill) – rather, I take it because the Protection and Regeneration act as general damage mitigation. This is why I take issue with the concept of Stone Heart, and why I say that it simply doesn’t mesh with how the class is played.

No defensive option will always be available every single time you need it. I don’t use protection against every backstab or shatter spike. I dodge most of those, but protection is still an option to mitigate something when it’s off cooldown. This is what I meant when I emphasized how damage mitigation from earth it is just one defensive option you have. I don’t save earth attunement just to mitigate specific attacks. Usually, the protection is just a helpful side-effect of attuning to earth, which I would do regardless of any boons it gives.

Stop saying “how the class is played.” I’m literally telling you I already attune to earth just to mitigate specific attacks on occasion, and you’re saying the class isn’t played like that. It doesn’t mesh with how you play, but stone heart will work with how I play. Don’t like the trait all you want, but it’s a fact that stone heart meshes with a playstyle some eles have developed.

Chaosky.5276:

Furthermore, the trait is pretty much designed with the idea that the player would treat the Earth attunement itself as a defensive skill, which clashes horribly with how the class is actually played. As it is, on-swap bonuses encourage cycling through attunements quickly, and you’ll often find yourself wanting certain skills that are locked away in Earth, so avoiding the attunement is no easy task.

There is some truth to this, but it’s also true that elemental attunement is a very common ele trait. Protection makes attuning to earth a logical and effective response to power damage. The difference is that stone heart will never carry into another attunement. Whether that is an issue depends on what’s going on, but the basic concept mixes well with how ele can be played. Staying in earth a few seconds longer when needed shouldn’t sound like the crazy suicidal idea some other people are making it out to be.

This next part isn’t necessarily directed at you btw.
Also, stone heart is literally meant to be just A defensive option. If you take stone heart and don’t think it will be an appropriate response for x situation, you don’t use it yet. You should still have vigor, snares, soft/hard cc and a defensive utility to fall back on. Your every action in combat does not revolve around making constant use of a grandmaster trait. Going 30 water and 30 arcana doesn’t mean you attune to water and dodge literally every chance you get. Fresh Air doesn’t mean you just try to spam electric discharge whenever air is available. Stone heart doesn’t mean you sit in earth for prolonged periods of time or make it your default reaction to being looked at.

Eles have a lot of aoe attacks. If you add the damage you do to multiple enemies together, it will obviously be higher than just the single numbers you see. A skill that hits 5 people only needs to deal 3k damage to each to deal 15k total. Dragon’s tooth deals comparable single target damage to backstab or eviscerate except it’s aoe. It’s way easier to avoid, but massive damage is there.

I like the goal and idea behind this trait, but I can’t see myself ever using it. What this trait should do is make all aoe ele heals bigger. That is the major weakness of every single one. If anet wants to give eles a more defined healing role, the heals need to be easier to hit allies with, which would increase the total healing eles do anyway.

This trait’s description should look more like this:
Using a healing skill, healing ripple, geyser, cleansing wave, etc, heals allies within a 600 radius for 50% of that skill’s total healing.

They could also just increase the radius on all the healing skills and traits by 50% or so.

At least the thief trait we know about is the most laughable. If a thief gets a 9k crit on you, that gives him a whopping 450 hp.

Forzani.2584:

Have you ever heard the saying that if you have nothing good to say…don’t say anything?

Get a life man.

Have you ever heard of “hypocrisy?”

Besides, I did say something nice; I said the OP played well. I didn’t see any faults in his play. What kinder, more flattering sentiment could I possibly express about a gameplay video?

Forzani.2584:

What do you accomplish kittening on his parade? …even if you are 100% correct that the fights he had were rigged.

As Chaos said, I was just trying to keep expectations realistic. If I gained anything from posting, it would be a comforting reminder that some people can take a “parade kittening” like adults. The post I’ll accomplish nothing with would be this one. The fact that you think I said anything about the fights being rigged means you’ll just add in whatever subtext you want.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

If you don’t feel this worth a sticky, ya should make one that is. There are many terribad staff Eles out there that are giving the class the reputation as “rally-bait.” x_x Videos like the ones you produce could go a long way to changing that.

It isn’t really a reputation, it’s more of a fact. Staff ele is objectively bad for 1v1 fights. I’d say the biggest reason the op won those fights was because his enemies were either not aggressive enough or they were so aggressive they ran into too much aoe. Despite the disclaimer, I can’t believe the other players were good. I swear at least 3 of them spent half their time swinging at air.

I’m not criticizing the op, I’d say he plays staff ele well. I’m not even trying to dismiss the wins; winning a 1v1 against anybody on a staff ele deserves some kudos. I’m just saying staff ele will never be considered good for solo to small group pvp in its current form. It can work in spvp because people have to stand in capture points, so all aoe is somewhat easier to hit with. However, anybody you fight in obsidian sanctum will likely just power through your cc and/or tank any damage that follows it regardless of how expertly you time and place them.

Meh, I just want churning earth to always crit. It’s easy enough to avoid that it would be fair to ensure that struck enemies take as much damage as you can deal.

I’d like a more reliable churning earth too, but that will never happen. Dragon’s tooth, shatter stone, ice spike, lava font and eruption make it pretty clear that anet wants ele aoe to be countered by casual strolling.

Odin.1354:

Guess what, its not meant for pvp! Or at least not for people who think they will actually easily succeed when they hit a button and it will always hit target in a 1v1….

Actually, I think churning earth is meant for pvp, spvp. I think all the delayed aoe ele skills exist because anet only balances around conquest. You can argue that not hitting anybody with attacks is ok in conquest because you’re potentially “zoning” the enemy out of the capture circle. Nevermind that killing people and knockback spam tend to expel them from a circle too with the advantage of interrupts and killing people.

ens.9854:

Elementalists don’t have sufficient ability to apply damaging conditions to make them viable as stated by anet themselves.

You invent the idea of “chill is meant to control” as some kind of justification but it doesn’t pan out. Ele chill skills do nothing besides apply minuscule chills—they don’t damage like engi nades or boon strip like spinal shivers or give your entire team 3+ seconds of chill with lifeleech. If hydromancy sigils are overpowered (which I doubt) that’s another matter entirely and has nothing to do with condi builds.

The disadvantages of a condi ele are pretty obvious. Nothing short of complete overhauls to traits and weapons will make them good. I only presented condi ele as something that could work with minor tweaks because I thought you believed that, and I didn’t want to argue about why condi ele is a bad idea in the first place. You were arguing for condi eles in the first place and suggesting a relatively minor buff to chill.

I didn’t “invent” anything. Chill only reduces movement speed and increases skill cooldowns. It just debilitates the enemy. Saying what the condition does is not an invention.

Some ele chill skills can use buffs. Freezing gust is objectively the worst chill skill in the game. Frozen burst is fine because it’s the lowest cooldown aoe chill skill in the game, but frozen ground could use a cooldown reduction. Even if chill dealt damage, the problems with those skills won’t go away. Freezing gust will still be a single target chill with too short of a duration and too long of a cooldown. Frozen ground will still have a 40 second cooldown, and people won’t suddenly politely stand in it. Your trait idea wouldn’t even be effective without using a hydromancy sigil and/or a main-hand dagger.

Eles can spam chill and burning. I shouldn’t have to point out all the burning skills eles have. Chill can be applied easily and repeatedly with a sigil of hydromancy. Whether people worry about me chilling them or not is irrelevant because I know when that chill has a big impact. Plus, the sigil does damage too. If you’re willing to change sigils, you can basically get exactly what you want right now.

It isn’t just about making something useful for power builds; conditions should just be kept in their place. Chill is for debilitating and controlling the enemy, and it is one of the strongest conditions for that. Any traits that buff it should just increase its ability to control. If eles need more damage from conditions, burning and bleeds are already perfect candidates. Conditions tick for the same damage regardless of which attunement you’re in, so buffing bleeding and burning should still be a viable solution to your issue.

sorrychief is right. Chill already has its place and it’s a strong condition. Terror is one of the worst traits in the game because it makes a cc condition, something that people would normally save to interrupt or disable somebody, into another condition they can just spam for damage that just happens to disable people too. We don’t need more terribly designed traits regardless of whether they would be broken or not.

The only trait that I’d like to see on ele that boosts a condition in a similar way is one that makes burning deal power based damage when it is applied.

coglin.1867:

We have had discussion in the past in which we have threads displaying all of the math proving this. Soldiers gear for example, out damages Dire gear by a fair bit. Dire gear has to have 50% condition duration to even compare, mathematically speaking. The problem is, that so many posters simply regurgitate other post or threads here, without actually having tested anything or developed any facts for themselves.

Condition builds aren’t better than power builds because conditions can deal more optimal damage. Conditions are better because: there are way more counters to power damage, you need to take specific gear, traits and skills to counter conditions, power attacks tend to be way more telegraphed, damaging traits for condi builds give you more conditions which overwhelms any reasonable amount of condi removal and they can deal similar damage to glass cannons from range with the armor/hp of a bunker.

Does your math account for conditions ignoring protection, armor and weakness? Can math account for the fact that conditions get applied without warning on crit? What formula did you use to account for the fact that you can snare and kite most power builds to mitigate their damage, but that is way less effective against condition builds? Do your tests account for the fact that power builds are dealing zero damage the instant they stop hitting somebody? CC, healing, running away, rezzing, finishing and using defensive skills like shield stance means a power build is dealing literally no damage. Condition builds can stop actively attacking for a few moments and the damage is still ticking away.

You’d only need to “test” builds and grab a calculator if you don’t actually play the game. There are lots of things elementary school math can’t account for. As you said, the problem isn’t damage; the problem is the damage in addition to all the other advantages condition builds have going for them. You shouldn’t just regurgitate some numbers you saw without actually playing the game and thinking beyond “this number is higher.”

Wyrden.4713:

nope it said that only activation from original aster deals dmg, the shared auras wont havr the additional effect

The notes I see say “Other sources of shocking aura will not grant this additional effect.” The source for everybody would be the same, the person that activated shocking aura. Even how you put it, “activation from the original caster,” doesn’t exclude the caster applying it to others.

I don’t actually think it will work that way; it is more of an amusing “what if” scenario. However, the notes don’t explicitly say it won’t happen.

I thought a 10 second cooldown on healing turret would be op too, but the overcharge would still have a 15 second cooldown. Without the overcharge, that’s no water field, no condi removal and half the healing. If an engi tries to use healing turret every 10 seconds, they’d probably (not actually going to do the math) end up with less healing per second than waiting for the overcharge to cooldown. If you deploy it every 10 seconds and wait for the overcharge before picking it up, you risk it being destroyed and don’t really gain much benefit from the lower cooldown.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

The patch notes are clearly a fake. This was posted by the devs on the balance forums:

TimeBomb.3427:

I’ll say that internally staff Ele has turned out to be strong, scary strong against condi meta. The glass cannon specs seem to be unchanged but the tankier dps specs have seen substantial improvements. Enough? Arguable. At least ele will now bring the cleanse support it has needed. Will the Signet of Resto change be enough to make it super strong? Arguable, but it’s definitely a viable option now. Do you want to lose the cleanse from ether renewal? Probably not.. but dagger specs see a nice sustain boost from using RS. Additionally, our changes has brought a new role to ele and it’s one hell of a role! I’m sure plenty of people will have tons of fun messing around with what they can do on ele now.

These patch notes show nothing for staff. Nothing for ‘support condi cleanse’.

They’re bogus.

Removing the cooldown on cleansing water would buff staff ele against conditions. It wouldn’t be the first time a dev exaggerated about the impact of a change.

If the notes are fake, they’re pretty good fakes. The changes seem very close to what anet usually does. I kinda hope they are real and shocking aura damage works with aura share. Grab 5 eles and use shocking aura all at once. 25 hits would only have to deal 600 damage to be an instant cast 15k aoe spike. Nice gimmick team for the lols.

Agriope.4523:

This thread is still going?

People hatin’ should post their vids of how “awesome” they are (merc’ing uplevel rangers doesn’t count – nor does kiting around 15 people and not doing anything).

I wasn’t aware giving props to others’ good play was a bad thing.

I like…no, I love how the guy being “hated on” takes it better than other random people that aren’t even being addressed. He doesn’t use generic and terrible retorts, like “you’re just a hater therefore everything you say is wrong” or “posting your own video is the only way to have valid criticism about another video.” He doesn’t fire back with baseless assumptions or “snide” and “clever” quotation usage. He didn’t get defensive at all. He just doesn’t care.

virtue.7235:

if you dont like my video then you dont like it
im not going to kill myself over it. i also dont really care much for what the majority of you guys think about my play.

I like you. I can never be friends with somebody wielding two incinerators, but this attitude gets a gold star.

LightningBlaze.4913:

I won’t continue with this discussion but I will tell you this last thing. Post a video of you dueling and see how many more criticisms you will receive based on your gameplay. It is so easy to criticize.

I probably wouldn’t get any more criticism than average. It’s easy to criticize, but I don’t see much of it when people post their roaming/dueling videos. Even I don’t criticize every video I happen upon. It’s easy to criticize, but you still didn’t exactly understand my point the first time. Maybe I didn’t explain it very well, but it’s clearly not as easy as praising if I need to defend my idea with more details than “I think x is the best.”

I doubt there are any faults people could point out about me that I’m not already aware of.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The purpose behind his combo is to bring his opponent hp down. There’s no reason to make it more complex than that in 1v1 unless you are mostly/full bunker that just cares about being a punching bag during the duel. What’s wrong with a updraft within a few seconds after earthquake? If your opponent doesn’t break the first stun and it is about to come back up, you want to keep him at that knocked down state. When I used to play d/d and s/d I used to cast earthquake to prevent the Mesmer to start frenzy. Sometimes it was successful, sometimes it failed. Many that condemn Serane based on this video haven’t encounter him yet. If you do I’m sure he will be victorious unless you outnumber him.

I know the purpose behind it, but you have plenty of skills that can just get somebody low. There are only 2 skills that interrupt somebody on demand. If you just want to get some damage in, you might as well run at them with lightning whip or use burning speed. If you really want to hold them in place first, you can use magnetic grasp.

My point was that the skills were frequently wasted without doing anything. He wasn’t keeping a guy locked down. He was simply reacting slowly and poorly to what was going on. There isn’t anything wrong with using updraft and earthquake shortly after each other in principle. The issue was the specific time that it was used in.

I’m not trying to make it complicated. It’s really common sense that when your strong skills take a long time to recharge you shouldn’t squander them.

It’s perfectly fair to condemn someone based on a video they post. He took the time to pick these fights and edit them together. He posted a link to the video here. It’s fairly safe to say he takes some amount of pride in it. It may not be his best, but it’s fair to assume he’s at least showing how he usually plays. I don’t have to fight the guy to have valid critiques. I’m not even saying he is definitely bad. His video is just unimpressive.

I win the majority of fights where I’m not outnumbered too. That just proves being above average. Actually, it doesn’t even prove being above average in wvw because of consumables, guard stacks, gear differences and the complete lack of wvw 1v1 balance. Duels in wvw are such a joke that explicitly looking for duels just comes off as ego stroking to me.

Mattmatt.4962:

Am i the only who isnt impresionned by this video ?
I mean, he/she only shows fight where his/her build is the rock against the cissor. What about condi-spec ?

I am never impressed by ele videos. No, not even the few ones I record. Though, I’m not impressed because of things the op did. I doesn’t matter what he fought when he’s not really thinking about what he’s doing.

The op uses “combos” and cc without thought or purpose. The op uses updraft and earthquake within a few seconds of each other at one point. The enemy wasn’t using a key skill that would have screwed them had it been interrupted, and to top it off both skills miss. He tries to updraft a mesmer well after he uses stealth. He earthquakes a mesmer while it is in the middle of blurred frenzy. He may have been trying to time it for right when the evade ends, but he wasn’t close.

I’m not trolling or trying to start anything. I just didn’t see anything particularly skillful or entertaining.

Paulo.8459:

A counterexample: (D/D set)
You use: heartseeker->death blossom->dancing dagger->cloak and dagger.
That’s 3+4+3+5=15 initiative. (Base pool is 12)
That means you cannot even use all your skills in a row like other professions.

You simply cannot calculate cooldowns for ressource based skills.
Saying something like “6 initiative is like half of your weapon skills on cooldown” it’s just to compare it a little bit, and maybe make it clear to people who don’t play thief.
12 initiative used means all your weapon skills are locked, or to compare it to other professions, all skills are on cooldown.

Actually, you can use all those d/d skills in a row. Initiative regenerates constantly; initiative is coming back every second while you are using skills. It takes more than 3 seconds to activate all those skills, so you have more than enough initiative to use all your skills in a row. Unlike other professions, using all your skills on one weapon in a row has a “cooldown” of 12 seconds without any traits that increase initiative regen. What do ya know, somebody defending their class conveniently forgets some details about how it works.

Yeah, initiative can’t be accurately compared to cooldowns because cooldowns aren’t in the player’s control. Cooldowns force you to save important skills with long cooldowns for the right situation. Using a defensive cooldown can leave you without that skill for 20 or 30 seconds. Assuming zero initiative, a thief can use a stealth, evade or mobility skill again in a third or a fifth of that time. Again, that assumes zero initiative and no regen trait, a worst case scenario.

I’m not complaining; I beat the vast majority of thieves I encounter. I’m just saying initiative is a profession mechanic. It wasn’t given to thieves to be fair and equivalent with other professions. Initiative is simply better than cooldowns. Nobody except other deluded thieves buys this “woe is the thief and his initiative” bit.

Dahkeus does have a point. It is kind of pathetic to act like your build is secret or some really awesome thing that needs to be protected. It’s not like some guy used a turret engineer to solo 10 people. You’d still be a kitten for not explicitly sharing it, but at least you’d have a unique build going which makes the “it’s a secret” attitude more understandable. This is a cantrip ele that skewed his gear towards offense. It would take one whole Google search to find a build that is nearly identical. If it took 150 gold and hours theorycrafting to come up with that, you’re doing something wrong.

Plus, most eles are running similar set-ups just like most people that play every other profession. You distinguish yourself from other people by being competent.

I 1v1 people all the time. You don’t need that much damage to kill most people. Just look at most of the responses in this thread. People like their damage, which means they make themselves easier to kill. Most solo roamers are using dps builds because they’re worried about exactly the same thing you are. Plus, what little defense most people bring usually has a counter and/or lengthy cooldown.

However, I won’t argue that there are better 1v1 ele specs out there. I picked one gear set to solo and group roam, and I’m frequently the only bunker/support in a group that is usually smaller than 5.

Arthas the Great.8765:

If that is a viable spec.
Maybe it is just my skills, let me level up my warrior, then I will know if it is just me or is really because ele is not viable.

If the profession and spec aren’t viable, that just means that I’m viable.

Arthas the Great.8765:

I used the most common and beginner-friendly spec, DD ele with 0/10/0/30/30 traits. While survivability is ok, damage is just insufficient to 1 vs 1 any other profession.

This is the spec I used based on a number of DD ele experts in youtube. I can only might stack to about 12 to 16 using ring of fire then arcane wave, earth dodge roll, earthquake and churning earth with sigil of battle

Power 1749
Precision 1320
Toughness 1686
Vitality 1690
condition damage 160
boon duration 60%
Critical damage 12%
Healing power 472.

Is this a viable ele spec for WvW roaming and occasionally 1 vs 1?

First, a defensive build is only beginner friendly in the sense that you die slower. To play a bunker/support build well you need to react, dodge and kite just as well as a dps build. The point of bunkering is to be just as good at dodging and make just as few mistakes while also having better personal defenses and support. Your defense as a bunker d/d ele should be way better than ok.

Now, some actual advice. Don’t might stack in pvp with long cooldowns. Using your 45 second cooldown aoe cc to stack might is a waste. Use it to interrupt a heal or enemy finish/revive. Use it when you think a stealthed thief is about to backstab you. If your skill takes a long time to cooldown, you should save it for a clutch situation. This is especially true when using a defensive build. You should be surviving a long time and have good sustain; there is no rush, time is in your favor, and you have time to wait for enemies to use up their stunbreaks and get to low hp before stunning them.

Attune to earth for protection as a fight starts. Generally, people will try to hit you hard right off the bat. Reduce the damage with protection and gauge how dangerous the people you’re fighting are.

Get rid of any condition damage gear that isn’t celestial. Eles have conditions, but they don’t have enough to warrant purposefully increasing condition damage. Yes, your crit damage is too low. This is coming from someone who uses a measly 40 crit damage. Cavalier gear is your friend.

Stop following guides and listening to people so much. What works for them may not work for you. Those Youtube people likely aren’t experts anyway. Take a little advice here and there, but you should base your build on your own play experience. Your build doesn’t have to be optimized or popular so long as it works for you. I’m still using the outdated bunker build with minor adjustments for personal taste. Some of my gear decisions aren’t even logical or efficient.

I don’t expect you to grab ascended gear. I’m just linking my build for the sake of showing exactly what works for me. Fyi runes of dwayna don’t ever trigger cleansing water.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImkbzx4wjDAkHuYCLiCPUekzM2A-jUDBofAYggUDgEIApmRN7MjJqBpupIasKbYaXQqXo6XIqYBGA-w

Also, don’t be apprehensive about trying mesmer; it’s the easiest class in the game to play and can be tough to kill.

Kyon.9735:

Good. Done with comparing the range, now time to take a look at the cool down. For me, I’d love to swap Rush for RTL with its current mechanics anytime. I’d miss RTL’s damage for my S/D burst build though (well, Rush’s damage is almost 2x better) and I’m forced to reserve it from time to time as an escape mechanism and the fact that it misses a lot even when you’re supposed to hit your target and gives you a 40 second cool down.

Not to mention using RTL is a one-way ticket if you don’t hit anything while Rush doesn’t give a kitten if you hit something.

Yeah, the cooldown on rtl is bad. That’s the only noteworthy disadvantage it has compared to rush and most other mobility skills. The damage compared to rush is neutral because rtl deals damage faster and more reliably than rush at the price of lower damage when it does hit. Strengths are countered by weaknesses; that is what balance is.

Rtl got nerfed because it was better than nearly every other mobility skill. Rtl had the same movement per second as rush (it was a strong mobility skill), required pretty much the same investment (just equip the weapon) and it was way harder to counter (only stuns and immobilize will stop it). Rtl was op for the same reasons that warrior regen/sustain is op, which you had no problem pointing out. There are always people that ignore obviously op stuff their class has, but they have no problem identifying op things on other classes. The 40 second cooldown is arguably too much. Yes, anet is clearly biased for not nerfing healing signet more harshly when it has similar balance issues to rtl. Maybe you would have preferred a nerf to something other than cooldown, but there shouldn’t be any questions about why some kind of nerf was needed.

Kyon.9735:

You should look both at the upside and the downside.

RTL ignores chill and cripple but doesn’t get any range bonus from swiftness. Rush is affected by chill and cripple but gets affected by swiftness.

That’s such a small downside though. At a certain point, advantages and disadvantages are too small to be worth mentioning. The fact that you can’t get an additional 300 range is more than compensated for by never losing 600+ range. Plus, the current condition meta makes it an even better trade. You’re very likely to be snared and they are less likely to be the conditions removed.

16 replies and nobody seems to have mentioned that rtl ignores every snare besides immobilize. Rush gets shutdown by cripple and chill, which were always easy to spam and stack. The nerf was still too harsh and biased, but there was a legitimate reason for nerfing rtl and no other mobility skill. Even if you only use it to run away, it’s still one of the most reliable short-term skills for that. Rush is bad for attacking because the damage is delayed after you reach your target. I honestly wouldn’t trade rtl for rush.

BurrTheKing.8571:

You also have to consider other class mechanics when talking about healing, you cannot directly compare them without factoring in everything from Aegis, Protection, Stealth, Clones, Evades, blind, etc. This point has been beaten to death but so many just ignore it because it’s an inconvenient fact to have to face. Their only significant form of sustain comes from this regen, they have one evade on GS and one longish block on shield. People who don’t play Warriors will go on and on about what Warriors do have while totally disregarding what they lack.

Warriors lacking boons, evades and stealth doesn’t justify them having a powerful heal with the least counters in the game. Everything you listed that other professions use have cooldowns and opportunity costs. Even the ele’s method of sustain healing is instant cast with little to no counters besides just dps or hoping poison sticks; however, there is a cooldown for attuning to water (so chill is actually a viable counter), you have to switch to the lowest dps attunement and invest 30 points into arcana to max out the healing per second. The opportunity cost for healing signet is you miss out on the other heals that are all pretty much objectively worse in nearly every situation.

If healing surge healed for 15k base regardless of adrenaline, that would be better for the game than healing signet. At least make warriors stop their cc and damage chain for a second to heal like everybody else. Give people a chance to interrupt the heal. Let us increase the cooldown with chill. Make warriors have to use that tiny bit of extra skill and thought regarding when to activate their heal. Even if warriors need op healing skills, they at least shouldn’t be the most boring and brainless skills to use and play against.

LightningBlaze.4913:

In summary, a single skill shouldn’t be offering all 4 excellent features which are: mobility, high damage, field and now evasion. The trade off of d/d is the melee range and that comes at the price of receiving more damage at higher scale battles. Burning speed was never in demand for a buff. It was already balanced. The weapon skills that actually do need buffs are completely ignored by Anet.

I agree that one skill shouldn’t have too much going for it, but there are plenty of skills across all the classes that do one or two things too many.

withdraw
-instant cast
-evade
-low cooldown
-removes snares
-creates distance

earthshaker
-still good damage
-low cooldown
-blast finisher
-aoe stun

Ideally, Anet would nerf the above and similar offenders, but they clearly don’t see much issue with them. Burning speed will be a bit too strong, but ele could use some skills that are a bit too good to compete with other classes better.

Yeah, it is regrettable that Anet ignores the useless ele skills. Burning retreat is only good for evades and creating some distance. It is a fire field too, but so is lava font. However, it takes longer to cooldown than burning speed. When the patch hits burning speed will literally be superior to retreat in every single way. Flamewall is still not technically a skill. It wouldn’t even be hard to fix some of these issues either. 10 or 12 second cooldown on retreat and it’s good. Flamewall turns into a circle the size of pre-nerf combustive shot. May not be the best solutions, but it would be better than doing nothing to them for over a year.

Noxrawr.6125:

Funny how you can defend that this type of damage is balanced. It isnt always possible to evade an attack.

It may not be balanced, but it isn’t overpowered. It isn’t because of dodging the attacks though, it’s because a glass ele has literally no active or passive defense aside from dodging. Glass thieves and mesmers still have their evades, stealth and teleports. That defense will even setup the damage skills. Dodging makes the clones to shatter, blurred frenzy is an evading attack and stealth gives thieves their strongest damage skill while forcing enemies to avoid it based on guessing. Plus the full ele combo has a 45 second cooldown. Literally, you survive the ele’s burst and you win. The ele build is the biggest gimmick in the game, it has one advantage, one strategy and one way it can win.

High instant cast damage damage skills are bad design, but it isn’t nearly as bad as 8-12k crits from invisible enemies every few seconds, a burst skill that lets the user evade or a 10 second cooldown teleport that can be used while stunned.

Weindrasi.3805:

I said there’s no such thing as feminine or masculine clothing, not that the charr have done away with feminine or masculine entirely.
In the real-life military, male and female uniforms are cut differently because male and female humans have different shapes—therefore, uniforms need to conform to those shapes to be the most useful. Charr, however, don’t have much variation in body shape.
If having a certain hairstyle made you a better fighter, then I’m sure all the charr would have that hairstyle, and hair would be unisex too.

It’s not that you said they got rid of it. It simply makes no sense that a culture would decide that one controllable part of appearance is pretty much entirely gender dependent while another is completely unisex.

The military uniform argument works for the 9 cultural armor sets in the game. You can maybe argue that the order armor and lion guard armor count as well, but that still leaves the vast majority of armor in the game unaccounted for. Besides, “military” would mean something different when that is the entire basis of how the society works. Uniforms would become something everybody wears everyday. It’s going to be far more casual and based on preference than how we would think of it. Many of the charr you first find in the story aren’t wearing cultural armor or standard gear combinations. Random npcs will have some armor pieces that don’t match and almost nobody else wears for no apparent reason. They personalize what they wear even when on duty. Yet I’m expected to buy that this personalization would never be gender specific. Different dress styles for men and women would never develop the way that it happened for hair.

Can we stop with this “male and female charr have the same body” nonsense? They basically do, but that does not prevent the armor/clothing from being different. Every difference between male and female clothing in the real world is not just because of breasts and hips. Those things would influence shape, but I’m talking about style here. If you took the most generic of white t-shirts and sprinkled some glitter on it, it would suddenly be a feminine shirt. Anet could have just changed the textures on some armor and said “These are styles and patterns females like but males don’t and vice versa.” So, can we stop making it sound like any differences in female armor would negatively impact its perceived functionality?

Hair would effect how well they fight. One female do has rings; those would make noise to alert enemies and get caught on things. The dreadlocks have bones or something that would do the same thing. There’s hair that dangles in front of the face to needlessly hinder vision. All the long hairdos give enemies one more thing they can pull on. The most efficient hairdos would be very short or no hair at all. These types of issues just don’t come into play for obvious reasons. It’s the same reason people can say the armor is meant to be functional and efficient with a straight face despite some of it being made of silk or leaving the entire chest area exposed.

Rorc.4619:

I believe I read from an interview somewhere that lore-wise, Charr casual-wear would be closer to the male’s loincloth, but they had to add something over the chest in the interest of keeping the T rating.

Oddly enough, all the armor that has almost no chest coverage for males is completely unaltered on female charr. Censor & rating logic……./shrug

Ashes.9586:

As far as the different hairstyles etc are concerned I’m pretty sure that’s just due to needing to have some differences in character creation, not lore reasons.

The armor being identical is likely not for lore reasons either. The real explanation would probably go more like “It saved time and effort Anet clearly didn’t want to devote to charr armor in the first place, and it would be an extremely easy decision to justify.”

Weindrasi.3805:

For them, there’s no such thing as feminine or masculine clothing—just clothing.

I really want to see someone defend this idea while taking into account the fact that charr clearly have a concept of masculine and feminine hairstyles.

Doomdesire.9365:

The current state of Diamond Skin makes it far too strong against condi classes. If you run Carrion or DIRE, forget about winning against an Elementalist using Diamond Skin. Then at the very least it would be more balanced in a 1v1 scenario yet provide eles with more toughness during zerg fights and small battles.

So? Condition builds destroy anybody that doesn’t spec heavily into condi removal. Even if somebody takes as much condition removal as they possibly can, they still won’t keep up with a necro or engi who just spams skills. Everybody has to spec just to have a chance against a condition build. On top of that, fighting a condi build in a 1v1 means potentially hundreds of points in toughness amount to absolutely nothing. Condition builds are op as hell in 1v1 fights, and they’re only slightly less op in groups.

Diamond skin was a terrible trait idea for many reasons, but it’s so pathetic that people using condition builds are actually taking their gripes to the forums. Honestly, tons of other builds have zero chance against conditions in a 1v1, but condition players start whining the second a single trait in rarely used trait line on a profession that isn’t even meta can hard counter them…….only in a 1v1 fight.

Frankly, eles should have never been threatened by a pure condition build. Eles have always had a lot of strong condition removal options and good sustain; on paper that should make pure condi builds pretty trivial. The old 30 water/30 arcana ele actually devotes 2 grandmaster traits for condi removal, but can still lose easily to a necro or engi. You spend 60 trait points to counter them, and you still have to play way better than them to win.

Distaste.4801:

Damage-
Full glass builds will do more damage and quicker, they just die fast so they don’t get to do it for long
Condition builds take time to build up damage and it can be removed

Mitigation-
Conditions are mitigated by EVERYTHING that glass damage is mitigated by(Condition needs to land to be applied) AND can still be removed.

If a power build lands every attack, it will deal more damage faster than a condition build. However, in practice, condition builds have more dps. The damage is much more consistent due to ignoring armor, being largely based on trait procs, having attacks that are far less telegraphed, not being reliant on one or two high damage skills and being ranged.

The things that mitigate both power and condition damage are always way more effective against power damage. Aegis and blind deal with one attack. Power builds tend to always have one or two really powerful skills. A single attack from a power build could be 10k+ damage. That one attack could have been the attack they use to setup that 10k hit. One hit from a condition build is always just going to be one or two conditions, and those exact same conditions will likely be applied by the next attack anyway.

Dodging has the same issue; there is no key condition attack to dodge or the attack isn’t telegraphed. I’d love to dodge doom, but it’s instant cast. I’d love to dodge corrupt boon, but it’s instant cast. I’d love to dodge those on crit burn traits, but I can’t predict the future of rng nor dodge every single crit that could possibly land.

Ele really didn’t need another situational heal with glaring weaknesses. Ether renewal gets hard countered by interrupts, and the long cast time means you spend a lot of time just healing yourself. The signet is useless against anything other than low sustained damage, and cc is a soft counter to it because you’re losing time when you could be using skills. Soon, we’ll have arcane brilliance, which will need a desirable field to blast and 5 enemies within 240 range to reach maximum effectiveness.

Brilliance should at least be instant cast. If you’re making an arcane build, you’re already giving up defensive utilities and possibly traits in arcana anyway. Brilliance could also use some more noteworthy advantages compared to ether renewal and the glyph. A blast finisher pales in comparison to removing 8 conditions on a 15 second cooldown or picking 1 of 4 boons.

Rednik.3809:

This is IRL military practice btw. All those armored bikinis are fictional.

First, the entire game is fictional. Second, you’re missing a key word from the OP. He said “always.” Charr are not always on duty, and this is especially true for the player characters. “This is a real world military practice” explains why the adamant guards, iron legion engineers and seraph guards all wear pretty much the same thing regardless of gender or any other factors. Most of the armor in the game isn’t even military issue though. If some charr in the black citadel or a lion’s guard quartermaster isn’t selling the armor, the decision on what to wear would be based on personal preference to a degree. Making literally all charr armor the same suggests that charr have no concept of the different genders having different styles. That’s clearly not true because males and females have different hair styles, and the similar ones are still different in some small way.

Frostfang.5109:

3 the T3 Human armour have been used for light – sad that the cultural T3 armour is no longer cultural for those humans… I actually feel sorry for them.

Feel sorry for them? why? Human T3 light is good looking enough to be made into a shameless re-skin gemstore item. I’d be elated just to have T3 light armor that didn’t tail clip. I’d need new pants if it looked so good that it was worthy of a re-skin and some people were actually willing to pay real money for it. Seriously though I can understand and agree with the reason why people are perturbed but the violin I’m playing is still awfully small.

I look at the bright side of bad gemstore charr armor though. I don’t feel compelled to buy them so I just save my money. Gold to gem conversion be very expensive sometimes.

Xillllix.3485:

It will not make any difference. It’s like the new super speed trait… Never noticed anyone using it and nobody in my guild is using it.

Actually, the new traits are far worse. The super speed only demands 10 in air, something nearly every ele already specced for. Burning fire and diamond skin need 20 and 30 points in trait lines nobody likes for passive traits that provide condition defense, something water already does quite well, via passive traits that we have no control over and don’t even provide steady, constant, dependable benefits.

patricide.1062:

nachtritter.8961:

Seriously HoD, it takes 70 of you to take down 30 FC? If you guys didn’t have the numbers you wouldn’t even hold a camp.

EDIT:: Wrong server. Am Drunk. GG GoM

You actually proved him right. Didn’t have numbers, so failed to hold a camp. HoD is confirmed to be full of scrubs.

Paciunek.2496:

How is this selfish? Everyone can heal themselves, and healing whole group doesn’t hurt only ele when swapping attunements. Self heals are better than aoe, because you can move and it often have additional effects for your profession.
And why would mesmer use iDisenchanter instead of many other better utilities? Nobody needs this just for people who can’t handle their own condi removal.
You are selfish expecting people to change their playstyle to focus just on helping you.
When I see how people don’t care when I’m dying under their feet, I understand why others run selfish builds. Bad players, bad players everywhere. Also more and more people level in Living Grindfest or Queensdale train, and they run the same builds in dungeons, because they have no idea about being helpful.

There are a lot of situations where self healing isn’t enough. This is especially true for people running glass cannons. If everyone is running hybrid builds just to have a chance at surviving, dps might suffer too much. Also, healing turret is a very strong heal. It has a large aoe radius, removes two conditions, makes a water field, casts quickly and has a low cooldown. Solo or group, healing turret has a lot of merit.

It isn’t selfish to expect people to play and build like they are in a group when they are in a group. What’s selfish is joining a group while having no desire or intent to work with them.

So, it’s understandable to get more apprehensive about being a team player when you’re with bad players? You do realize that only makes things worse right? Your party members could clearly use assistance that you can provide, but you refuse to give any. How often does that make success more likely?

Glenstorm.4059:

Honestly, RtL’s problem was that it used to travel 1500 units rather than 1200. It was fine after the range was brought down.

Actually, we’ll never know this because the range change and cooldown clause happened at the same time. I agree it more than likely would have been ok with just the range reduction, but Anet didn’t nerf rtl a little bit at a time.

Anet just shows such clear favoritism to some professions. They don’t want to move terror to grandmaster because necro builds hinge on it, but they had to be persuaded to not move all the important adept ele traits to master; they settled for most of them. They’re thinking about making dhuumfire master and proc on hit instead of on crit because condition spamming just isn’t strong enough yet. Worried about power creeping ele, but thieves are getting 2.5 more initiative every 10 seconds (slightly stronger than a current master level trait) for free. Other classes have/are getting larger radii on support traits, venom share and shattering conditions, while eles got reductions.

kevinmrstowe.4098:

My team isn’t built around me, I build my ele for my team.

A true inspiration for the children