Guild Wars 2

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I think the question Anet has to ask themselves should be:

How can we combine horizontal progression with one of the core aspects of the game: exploration, without having it feel grindy. And how can we do this without having the player experiencing the same thing again when he starts a new character (avoiding traditional quests).

Yes, this is exactly it. At the end of the day, to supply thousands of hours of content with limited people making the game, there has to be a notion of replayability but there is an extremely fine line between replayable and grind. I would love to be able to log on for a 30 minute window and do something other than my daily, because that really creates fatigue. The only saving grace of the achievements system in its current form is that you don’t really get anything that great out of it.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

The Great Al.2546:

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

Well, I was exactly adressing that dilemma with my suggestions of zone progression (in a non-grindy way like finding unique events instead of repeating the same over and over) and dynamic order quests (NPCs who wander around in the world and have certain tasks for you).

I also like the idea about npcs who direct you to existing events in order to help one of the Orders and progressing via Duty Points.

Things where you have to do multiple specific open world activities – a big variety – rather than achieving goals by doing literally anything (which leads to grinding the most effective thing over and over).

I think it’s also important to value the dynamic aspect. GW2 was designed to be different each time you start a new character. In the end it didn’t work out quite as well, since events rotate in short intervalls and there aren’t enough of them – but still…
New content should lead players to explore the zones, not have them (as you put it nicely) follow a guide from one waypoint to another. This could be achieved by roaming npcs which need to be found first – which may trigger events.

Furthermore I also think that flagging things on the map is counterproductive to exploration. We had updates where you had to find gifts, halloween doors,… on the map, fight the things that come out of it and move on to the next. The fact that these were flagged on the map made a race out of it, rather than finding them while exploring the zone. I didn’t enjoy that.

Unfortunately the wintersday gifts don’t show up on the map, but it is still a race to get to them. I think it’s a bad idea to have ‘first come first serve’ achievements.

Although there are a lot of great ideas with regards to gear, skills, vanity, etc, there has been less talk about how we are actually going to obtain said items. My concern lies around the fact that each Living Story update has brought about achievements/skins that center around large amounts of grind (following zergs WP to WP) or RNG.

GW2, in it’s current state, has many different looks for endgame armor. The problem is that that the sets either require large amounts of dungeons (repetitive, static tasks) or impossibly low RNG odds. Will Guild Halls require millions of wood, ore, etc, farming? Will new skins be RNG based, either through keys or the mystic forge? IMO, the method of obtaining the rewards mentioned in this thread, is as important, if not more important, than the rewards themselves. I personally would rather have fun obtaining a semi-rare item than get grey hairs relying on RNG or massive grind.

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

I’m a little surprised how little mention we’ve seen of Runes. We already have a couple sets that are essentially the lynchpin of strong, competitive builds (Solider, Perplexity). Also, Runes follow such easily iterative patterns with only small twists in the 4 and 6 set bonuses that I think it would be possible to open it up to the players to suggest really clever and inspiring new Runes. Maybe a “CDI Contest”, where instead of limiting things to a first, second, and third place winner, every player who suggests a Rune that is adopted into the game would get a set of 6 or 12 of them as the prize. With players sometimes wondering what the benefits of contributing to a CDI are, maybe a little in-game loot would inspire them .

As an example, I’d like to see~

Superior Rune of the Trapper
Icon resembles a bear trap

(1/6) +28 Condition Damage
(2/6) +10% Condition Duration
(3/6) +55 Condition Damage
(4/6) When an opponent triggers one of your Traps they are Tormented (2 stacks, 8 seconds duration)
(5/6) +100 Condition Damage
(6/6) When you set a Trap you also remove 1 Condition.

Which could open up new build possibilities for Rangers and Thieves, but at the cost of carrying some of the currently popular choices (Lyssa, Divinity).

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

Sounds great. So we should be looking for all that around January 14th, right?

I don’t think we need more runes, there are plenty but the bigger problem is that the PvE meta is still too geared towards Beserker-everything.

Iris Ng.9845:

- It’s a noob question, but what to do after the first rotation, when someone in the group picks up the lightning hammer? I usually have a 1s mind lag and if the boss does not die at that point, I feel ‘vulnerable’ without my hammer. So what is the best move?

- I’m currently trying build F. The dragon tooth, even with the trick, always lands in a melee range, not at the stacking place. So is it OK for me to forgo it and only use to stack might when engaged? With pugs, sometimes the melee breaks up to range because of the pressure, like with the Nightmare tree in TA Forward path, what is the best course of actions to keep the DPS while sustaining survival? I found myself get tangled and downed by the vet a lot.

Thank you in advance,

Iris

I think the main assumption with these guides is that you are running with a group that won’t do that.

Anierna.6918:

@ The Great Al: Assuming your group won’t be able to melt bosses immediately (eg. a pug), you have 2 options:

1) Because your group is a bad pug, you have to do all the work; you can’t rely on your team. You need to maintain all the fury and all the might, and stack all the vuln all by yourself. Therefore, you should go Build G, 30/30/0/10/0. This is the glassiest of the glass builds, but it provides the most utility; you just have to hope that all the group buffs you’re providing are enough to help your noob group kill the boss before you go down. Survivability-wise, you can use Arcane Shield and Glyph of Elemental Harmony in Water Atune to provide Regen.

2) You can use the tankiest of the glass builds, Build C, 10/10/25/25/0, which has greater survivability due to 25 in both Earth and Water. It also has Conjurer, which you’ll need since your noob group will probably prolong the fight past 30 LH charges. If you need greater survivability, same as above: Arcane Shield and Glyph of Elemental Harmony in Water.

If you need even more survivability (gahd, your pug group must be REALLY noob, lol), you can use OH dagger instead of focus for Frost Aura and Cleansing Wave, and CC’s via Updraft and Earthquake. Believe it or not, the AoE cleanse and heal of Cleansing Wave has saved many a stacked-up bad pug. lol. I usually stick with focus for the invuln though.

Thanks for the advice. One question -

why 25 in earth and 25 in water? Maybe I am missing something, but how often is your endurance going to be full as a mid-to-close range glass cannon? How are you mitigating damage if you aren’t dodging? Wouldn’t 20 earth 30 water be more helpful?

Prysin.8542:

The Great Al.2546:

I would have to strongly disagree with this. Why punish players who venture out into unpopulated areas of the game with quests that are impossible to complete? I think that there are enough unpopulated areas that I would go as far as to say that group events should scale down to a single player if no one else is around.

On the other hand I like the idea of instanced 10-12 man content, similar to the Deep, FoW, etc. But for open world, I don’t think it would ever be a good idea to mandate that a certain number of people be required for any of the events.

The idea is not to punish the players, but to avoid power creep.

The issue with power creep, which you are probably very familiar with, is that it wrecks havoc on the PvP side of a game. And let us just all agree that Arena Net’s balancing team are not exactly showing a prime example of equilibrium here. So while some professions like thieves, mesmers and engineers might get the short end of the stick in open world, professions such as ranger, warrior, guardian, necromancer and elementalist would get the short end of the stick in PvP/WvW.
So to avoid a direct power creep, one could introduce my idea. Initially, GW2 was promoted as a “teamplay” oriented game, where individual play would be ineffective compared to teamplay. This is true, and my suggestion is only evolving upon that design philosophy.
Realistically speaking, one man can only get so far on his own. A group can get further, and when you get a zerg the sky is the limit.
Anet has stated that they do not wish to introduce another tier of armor. Yet progression of the game will demand a power creep, or else, players and the developers will end up stagnating and become saturated.

I agree that I would love to see a better sense of teamwork in PvE. Instead of a trinity of classes X,Y,and Z, you should still need some combination of damage, tanking, and support, but any class could fill that role if properly traited. I think this should be done more in dungeons and any other elite areas to come. The problem with enforcing this in the open world is that there are simply too many servers and too much spread out space to ensure that you will always be able to play with other people. And again, the guy who starts GW2 a year from now gets punished, because in all likelihood the content that he wants to play will already be left by today’s playerbase, and will be impossible to complete without a Heroes/Henchmen system of GW1. I think your suggestion would work really well if servers could somehow be merged, but in its current stage I couldn’t imagine having to wait for additional players in order to complete content.

Prysin.8542:

Instead of scaling individual character power output, i think Arena net should focus on increasing the difficulty of content, by making it utterly impossible to solo end game content, and to scale content and participation requirements such, that a simple 5 man team can not cut it.

There are many ways this can be done, let me suggest two;
1 – increase group size to 10 and balance new content from that perspective. When the currently off limit areas of Tyria is made open, scale the open world exploration such that you must be 2-3 players to have even a slight chance at making it.
Say you open up 3-4 new areas, these areas are considered end game content, require dynamic and continuous group play to even REACH a quest or town, let alone survive on the road. Then once it is time for opening up new areas of the game, you can increase the character level first and foremost. Opening up yet another trait line (Legendary line) which has epic OP effects but cost 3x the trait points. (just a wild suggestion)

2 – Currently, most content is balanced on a 5 man group. The rewards and difficulty would indeed be appropriate if events only had 5 people attending. However we have upwards of 40+ players on some events. This means that the content is too easy and the reward too great. Fixing these “hotspots” of activity will not do the game any good in the overall sense, it will only drag out the time it takes to grind. And people will always grind.

In the promotion of the game, Arena net claimed to have a very dynamic quest system. I liked how it was marketed and the intention. Perhaps make World Events like bounty hunts? They suddenly appear, no fixed or estimated timer, with a short warning, kinda like current scarlet system.
This way, a champion of jormag could suddenly appear at the gates of Hoelbrak. Without warning, without any time to plan. This would increase difficulty, add a sense of “X-factor” but also make the game more immersive. The fact that we “know” when all the events will happen (it’s random, but not random enough) and where, that kills off some of the fun. By making a global world event or perhaps a global event? that requires certain groups to defend/defeat nodes, while others take down bosses? Stuff that forces a group to spread out, thus making content indirectly more challenging due to the lack of focused DPS.

I would have to strongly disagree with this. Why punish players who venture out into unpopulated areas of the game with quests that are impossible to complete? I think that there are enough unpopulated areas that I would go as far as to say that group events should scale down to a single player if no one else is around.

On the other hand I like the idea of instanced 10-12 man content, similar to the Deep, FoW, etc. But for open world, I don’t think it would ever be a good idea to mandate that a certain number of people be required for any of the events.

1. I agree with Temariah who said ‘QUESTS’. It’s almost to the point where I miss the exclamation marks over NPCs. Right now in Open-world PvE, you can either aimlessly run around, or follow a zerg. I want some more direction, and to be encouraged to visit the corners of the map.

2. Weapon Skills. Even though GW1 had a ton of subpar skills, it was still fun to play around with the skillbar. Even as a primary elementalist, with the highest number of skills available at any given time, I find myself wishing I could customize the available skills.

3. Better variety in obtaining visual upgrades. In order to get a specific ‘endgame’ armor look, you have to grind a dungeon something like 20 or 30 times. Outside of these dungeon armors, there are next to no skins (weapon or armor) that drop in the open world that have desirable looks (obviously just my opinion). Would REALLY love to see region and even zone specific ‘endgame’ skins, like GW1 had.

Although dailies have certain ‘optimized’ spots, I like to switch it up and pick random areas to do my dailies. I recently went to a zone that I hadn’t been to in a while, Dredgehaunt Cliffs. I stumbled upon a cave called ’Dissun’s Mine’. Inside was a random event which was a generic ‘protect the blue circle’ event. And then…nothing. I explored the rest of the cave, which was entirely empty. The merchant that spawned after the event had nothing useful.

This is just one of example, but exemplifies how most of the DE’s in the game are inconsequential, static, and essentially hurts the replayability of the game, because there are no incentives to really explore and replay areas.

Forgive me if DE’s do not fit into the Horizontal Progression topic, but I believe that DE’s can be the best form of horizontal progression, if done properly. They remove grind, and reward exploration.

I have probably 500+ hours on my elementalist, primarily PvE/Dungeons, but have never tried the focus. As far as I can tell the only spells really worth using are Swirling Winds and the 2 earth spells. When should swirling winds be used? Is there a guide, like “in this part of this dungeon”,or, “when X enemy does Y attack”? I assume not every projectile attack is worthy of using the spell, and I don’t want to waste it as it has a decently high CD.

Anierna.6918:

@ Assassin: Let’s look at the dmg you get from traiting into Fresh Air. It comes from 2 sources: the 15 minor in Air, which does single-target dmg when swapping to Air, and Lightning Strike, the Scepter 2 Air instant-attack, which is on a 5 sec CD, the same CD as Fresh Air. You can play it in 2 ways: either stacking Might with s/f and trying to fit in burst via Air 15 and Lightning Strike via Fresh Air, or forgetting about Might stacking and trying to maximize burst dmg via those 2 sources.

Trying to fit Fresh Air burst into s/f Might stacking rotation:
Fire 2 > Fire 4 > Fire 3 & Arcane Wave > Air Atune & Air 2 & Arcane Brilliance > Earth Atune > Earth 4 > Water Atune > Water 5 > summon/pick up LH > 6 complete LH AA chains > Air Atune > 2 complete LH AA chains > Fire Atune & drop LH > repeat

Because you swapped to Air to activate Air 15 and use Air 2 between Fire and Earth Atunes, your LH hits 1.625 secs later than it would have had you not gone Air. This means it does not combo Area Might, since your fire field expires before the first chain finishes. The extra dmg you do by using Air 2 and 15 do NOT compensate for losing 15 Might total (3 stacks * 5 party members). Therefore, if you’re trying to maximize group dmg, Fresh Air is useless.

You might be thinking “well, why don’t I atune swap while using the LH to activate Air 15 more often, instead of staying in Water with the LH?” If you swap out of Water, you lose the 20% dmg modifier – and that is FAR more important that the amount of dmg you get via Air 15.

The alternative is to abandon Might stacking and try to use Fresh Air to activate Air 2 and 15 the maximum number of times. Assuming you don’t trait into Arcana, you have a 13 sec CD on each Atune and a 1.625 global Atune CD, as I said before. Fresh Air also has a 5 sec internal CD. Air AA w/ scepter has a 3.5 sec duration. If you are PERFECT at timing Atune swaps (and I mean perfect) and lucky with crits, that means you can:

Time: 0.000: start in Atune 1, swap to Air to activate Air 15, AA in Air and use 2 while channeling,
Time: 1.625: swap to your 2nd atune while channeling,
Time: 2.000: assume an instant crit with the channel and instantly swap back to Air, activating Air 15,
Time: 3.500: start a 2nd Air AA,
Time: 3.625: swap to Atune 2,
Time: 7.000: assume the last tick of the Air AA channel crits, and swap to Air to activate Air 15. Use Air 2. AA in Air
Time: 8.625: swap to Atune 3
Time: 10.500: Air AA ends; start to AA in Atune 3
Time: 12.000: Assume the Atune 3 AA crits, and swap to Air to activate Air 15. Use Air 2. Start to AA in Air
Time: 13.625: Swap to Atune 1, continue to AA Air channel.
… etc

What problems do you see with a rotation like this, that makes maximum use of Fresh Air, Air 15 minor, and Scepter Air 2 attack? I see a bunch: no Might stacking (and I proved in the previous example that losing even a single Area Might combo is disastrous), and you’re spending a LOT of time using the Scepter’s weak AA… oh, and of course, it’s humanly impossible to maintain a rotation like that to the 3rd decimal place of a second. The first 2 secs of rotation are very good burst; after that, though, Fresh Air doesn’t do much for you. Average DPS over a 30-sec time period is FAR lower than what you’d get with the rotation I showed in this vid, using the LH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeRhQ40ckQ4

Hey,

I appreciate your text and video guides, they were very helpful.

The problem for me is that I generally run with PUGs, or even if I run with guildies, the groups are never going to be optimal enough where I can use my heal spell and magnetic wave purely for offensive purposes. Do you have a good damage focused build that is still sustainable enough to survive in a ‘bad’ group?

I would really like to hear Anet’s stance on dungeon selling. Inherently I think it’s a very good thing for the game, except when the sellers use glitches and exploits.

My biggest concern is around a buyer buying a dungeon path, which was completed by people using glitches/exploits. i.e. can a buyer get in trouble/banned for buying a path that, unknown to him, was previously glitched through by the sellers?

Thanks for all of your feedback. I am running 30/0/0/10/30, Berserker gear. In almost every other situation, I run a might stacking + LH build that I have seen on this forum (Neko’s guide, I believe).

I agree that Staff is weak, I just felt like I should be staying as far away as possible. I will try a S/F build.

I was recently part of a group that was able to skip the last group of mobs by a creative use of the terrain (which is most likely ‘common knowledge’ at this point, but I would still prefer to not specify, as to not make it a more widespread practice).

Is this working as intended? I have googled the issue and it seems as though it has been there pretty much since launch. Should I refuse to go this way? I don’t want to do anything that could be considered an exploit.

I have tried Arah P2 a few times, and feel mostly ineffective on my elementalist because the entirety of a fight is spent healing/dodging as I essentially cannot take a single hit. What is the strategy for this? Can any of the Lupicus circles be negated from arcane shield? I assume that staff is the only real choice of weapon for that fight, as the entire fight is spent kiting anyway – unless I am doign soemthing wrong.

Savoy.6824:

So Im looking for a build that can come close to the damage output of a warrior’s axe/mace and greatsword build to run in dungeons only. No fractals, no wvw.

Also Id prefer not to die whenever an enemy sneezes on me. I do know how to dodge but even on paths I know well like COF p1, I still go down at least once per run in my zerker gear. Im a big believer in no matter how much damage you do, its all for not if your always lying on your back.

Ive read that the lightning hammer build can actually out damage a warrior but Ive also heard that it takes a specific group set up and that its glassy as all get out. Are any of the changes coming out on the 10th of december gonna help dungeon ele’s. Am I in the right place or should I be looking at Rangers

If you want to do good damage and stay alive, staff is your only choice. You won’t outdamage a warrior, though.

How is renewing stamina OP? Guardian has the exact same spell at the 5 spot, so they don’t have to waste a trait. Additionally, Guardians have multiple blinds and aegis at their disposal, so vigor isn’t even as critical to them as it is for elementalists.

JonPeters.5630:

Ok all it’s been a long 3 days of reading. We talked for a few hours today about this stuff and I won’t summarize it until tomorrow morning but at least wanted kill a few minutes on the bus here to keep you up to date. We felt like this was a good useful exercise and will continue to do it for future patches if we can. Thanks to everyone who contributed and continues to positively contribute to the discussion. Due to the time it takes to finish up, fully test and push these changes forward I am going to lock this thread at the end of the week. Keeping it open past then is disingenuous as far as what we would reasonably be able to accomplish.

Thanks all and I’ll be back with some concrete stuff tomorrow,

Jon

Thanks Jon, it’s definitely appreciated that you are all listening to the feedback and keeping us in the loop as to your thought process! Hope this will continue for future releases.

oZii.2864:

Why not just leave EA where it is like it is currently. It fits the Arcana line benefits your build no matter what attunement you are in that is why people like Arcana and the traits that are in Arcana.

If EA was moved down people wouldn’t go 30 points into Arcana. Then you would have elemental surge and? I can’t think of anything else that would be awesome to go 30 in arcana for. The replacement trait probably wouldn’t be that good unless it was some +60 to all stats and 12 critical damage basically divinity runes in trait is the only thing I can think of that fits the theme or arcana and is attractive.

So we would have a 2 GM traits in Arcana that people wouldn’t take. EA could move down IF elemental attunement was buffed to like 10 second base duration on boons. In the end though it looks like reshuffling for no reason.

It is like making build diversity at the sake of 30 in Arcana. It is like mesmer for example there are builds that go 30 points in Dueling but nobody actually takes a Grandmaster trait in dueling most times they take an adept or master trait at Grandmaster because the choices at adept and master are better. It is always Phantasmal fury, duelist discipline, deceptive evasion, blade training, or far-reaching manipulations are always better choices than any of the GM traits. That is basically what would happen to Arcana.

The Great Al.2546:

I’d be willing to settle for the mechanics changing slightly, like being unable to trigger it twice in a row in the same attunement.

It already works that it has a 10 sec icd if you are in the same attunement. That is plenty as is now because nobody really sits in a attunement longer than 10 seconds and the ones that you would want to use more than twice in a row are water and earth in a fire field. The rest are just ok.

The fact that most traitlines don’t have 2 viable GM traits is a problem in itself. EA is a trait that every Elementalist should have right now and I would argue that just giving it to us for free is far better than any other solution, especially since 20 points in Arcane is essentially mandatory, and 10 in water will no longer get you active condition removal.

Da Beetus.1275:

Heart of the problem? Most players don’t understand what “Jack of all trades” means.

Put another way, the Ele’s strength is that our weaknesses are not as weak as our opponent’s weaknesses. No matter who/what you are facing, you can perform their weakness better than they can.

The problem with the Ele is that our strength (which you listed above) is irrelevant, because the current state of the game essentially forces you to focus on one thing, not to use an ‘all around build’. In a game where every class truly needed dps, condition damage, healing, and toughness, the Elementalist would shine. But right now the game is nowhere near that.

I think making Evasive Arcana as a class bonus is the only real way to make 30 arcane not mandatory, without ruining the class. This would also be a buff that the profession desperately needs, without being OP.

I’d be willing to settle for the mechanics changing slightly, like being unable to trigger it twice in a row in the same attunement.

Jon,

I’m curious as to what the justification is for the Elementalist having the lowest health pool.

Am I wrong in thinking that a D/D glass cannon Elementalist (i.e. melee range, lowest health, lowest armor) should have the highest consistent damage output in the game?

I was going to make this thread myself, glad someone else had the idea. Anet really needs to understand why 30 arcane is still mandatory.

The Elementalist changes seem like a huge nerf to most of the current builds. All 4 of the water and arcane skills that got moved are skills that I regularly use.

Can someone explain to me how the lowest health, lowest armor profession does not do the most damage at melee range? That seems like a perfect high risk, high reward scenario. Yet my guardian does more damage, and has infinitely more survivability.

What is the justification for the ele being so squishy, if the damage output is not there?

Really excellent advice, thanks to both of you. Having previously spent all my time as an elementalist, I’m actually struggling to rely on my autoattack at all, as I’ve been conditioned to essentially ignore it. I do like the idea of having one melee and one ranged weapon, although it seems that a lot of builds are built around two melee weapons. From what I gather, Guardian is mostly melee-only unless around one of the few ‘ranged-only’ bosses?

Hi all, have about 400 hours on my elementalist, trying out a guardian now.

Weapon swapping is a new mechanic to me since I have only had attunement swapping. The elementalist mindset is basically that you are constantly.swapping attunements or you are not making the best use of your class. My question is – do you generally just swap weapons to switch from a melee to ranged (i.e. greatsword to staff), or is it advantageous to find synergies between weapon sets? I.e., the greatsword has a few combo fields, and the hammer has a finisher, so I would imagine that within a fight, weapons are swapped multiple times. Are there any websites that list the most commonly chosen weapons to use as a first and second weapon set? Thanks!

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 see absolutely no reason to put 10 in Fire. Those 10 points would be better split between water and arcane, giving you water 20 (remove condition when switching to water) and arcane 10 (boon when switching attunement).

Really excellent guide. I don’t think I’m necessarily ‘good’ enough to try a full on glassy build in a dungeon, so I think I will give your last one a try.

It’s been a long time since I’ve run a build without 10 in air (really like the swiftness, as well as fury when casting an aura). I may try 10/10/0/20/30, just because I do spend plenty of time outside of dungeons.

Do you find Air #30 to be useful in dungeons? I feel as though as an elementalist I am more expected to be focusing on AoE damage, as opposed to single target.

I always find it embarrassing when I have to get ressed in dungeons, so I find myself taking a 0-10-0-30-30 build, and at the very least, I am sharing fire, shocking, and frost auras. Yet I feel as though that I am hardly doing any damage – it has been said many times before, but since the elementalist is the master of nothing, I always feel as though my spot could have been better with a different profession.

So this then begs the question – is it worth it to go a more damage-oriented route? What is the overall difference in damage between a glassy 30-30-x-x-x build and the 0-10-0-30-30 build? If it is, say, 20% more damage, then that only means that the group as a whole is doing around 4% more damage, right? Is that amount of damage worth dying potentially much more often?

The existing 0-10-0-30-30 is still viable in groups. I am considering taking away 10 points of water and putting it in either air or earth.

I think most builds work in PvE (really talking about dungeons here – outside of dungeons/fractals, it doesn’t even matter what you run) as long as you follow the following guidelines -

0 points in fire, ever
30 points in either arcane or water, or both. 15 is the minimum for water.

What is everyone doing in dungeons now? Having a hard time convincing myself to try something other than 0-10-0-30-30

I think that the ‘Living Story’ is good in theory. Unfortunately, it has been dominated by ‘find x of these and click on them’. This lasted for literally 2-3 months earlier in the year, and although the Living Story events have improved, I am still finding myself running around LA clicking on pinatas, or clicking a firework 100 times, or running around zones clicking on a dragon statue to burn.

I’ve had more fun doing a ‘kill 10 rats’ quest in GW1 than I’ve had doing any of the above. If the Living Story is truly going to be a core feature in the months to come, I do hope that the achievements/activities centered around them become more interesting.

Any thoughts?

I currently play primarily with a 0/10/0/30/30 build. I have around ~18000 health and 683 healing power.

I find that when I have low health, in order to get back to a safe amount of health I have to do the following:

Use my healing spell (generally glyph, sometimes ER)
Switch to Water (water #15 kicks in)
dodge roll (evasive arcana)
cast dagger water #5.

This seems excessive to get back to full or near full health, and this is the problem that I have a hard time switching out of x/x/x/30/30. How much additional Healing power do I need in order to be able to replenish my health with only 1 or 2 steps?

I liked using Signet of Air during my casting of dagger earth #5. I will still probably do that, although if I am casting that spell, I presumably do not need a stunbreaker.

daphoenix, do you ever run a 20-10-0-30-10 for signet/aura sharing? the 20 in fire would give you and your teammates a fire aura whenever you cast a signet.

I have around ~400 hours on my Elementalist. Started out as S/D, but moved to D/D and haven’t looked back. I really enjoyed the 20-10-30-x-x Signet/Aura build for a long time, but once I started doing dungeons, I moved to 20-10-0-30-0 because my healing and health weren’t up to par.

However, most dungeon builds I see (and even non dungeon) are 0-10-0-30-30. I would expect that our usefulness arises from the fact that we can give permanent fire aura/fury/swiftness to everyone, so why would this be desirable to the 20 in fire, which gives everyone an aura when you cast a signet? Does anyone still run 20/10/x/30/x or are all builds centered around 30 in arcane?

Elementalists are fair to good at most aspects of the game. The problem is when you are doing higher level content like dungeons, when you more or less settle in to one role, but you are never going to be the best at any given role.

Having said that, it’s a fun class to play, thanks to the versatility.

I prefer 20/10/0/30/10 for D/D dungeons. If you really want to be an aura sharer, you need at least 2 signets and the 20 in fire IMO. I think 10 in arcane is enough.

PierPiero.9142:

but a signet build without written in stone is not very viable in my opinion. Signet of earth gives u a good amount of toughness now … but if u don’t have written in stone u loose it when u use signet

Yeah, the passive effects of signets are great to the point that I am considering switching back. The lack of healing and condition removal still hurts in Fractals/dungeons that I am considering swapping out one signet for cleansing fire.

I recently switched from a 20-10-30-0-10 to a 20-10-10-30-0 signet/aura build, becauase I just found the healing to be way too awful and really lacking condition removal.

We were all hugging the gate.

I was in a party and we freed the 10 prisoners. We got to the point where we had to ‘lead the prisoners out’. We got to the gate, and nothing happened, which forced us to quit.

That makes sense, it would prevent against some intentional manipulation as well.

I think one thing that ‘dynamic events’ are missing is a real sense of consequence and reward.

My suggestion to remedy this is as follows -

Every zone has its own ‘health’ meter of sorts. Completing events contributes to this meter postively; failing events contributes negatively. Healthy zones will have more positive rewards – maybe x% magic find, x% health, etc. A zone with many failed events will cause negative effects – maybe friendly NPCS have less health, -x% armor reduction, etc.

This could cause some zones to become undesirable to play in. When a zone reaches some threshhold, maybe 10% health, a server wide announcement occurs, telling people that this zone is in need of assistance. At this point, players would theoretically get to that zone, completing events and eventually ‘nursing’ the zone back to health. This would of course have to come with an incentive – I would say that participating in a zonewide revival would be worth a laural, or a boss-like chest with a gold in it.

Any thoughts?

Crossplay.2067:

I would argue that it does work in dungeons. You may have you change how you play to make it work. If you notice in the video, I rarely dodge. I purposely take hits to trigger might and chill. In certain situations, I even stand in front of other characters to shield them. I also try to save the frost aura for when I know a big hit is coming. I’ve used it against the Risen Abomination while he charged at me. After hitting me twice in a row, I got up with half my health remaining. Granted my armor is exotic PVT but that’s still amazing for an ele. Hell, there are warriors that can’t even take one hit.

I will have to try that, then. Do you mind posting the build?

Lanoitakude.5380:

Hey Swiftwynd, I really like your build! I’m leveling my Elementalist in solo play (lvl65 at the moment), and have been running a D/D signet aura build. I’m considering mixing it up a bit to better synergize with your Water-heavy Hammer setup, while maintaining a similar level of self-buffs (as I do not have any other players to supply conditions/boons).

Here’s the rough build at lvl65:

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcszz9moaNCmoaNCmGaVG0cszMm

The idea behind this build is to provide myself with Burning and Vulnerability, in order to trigger some of the damage stacking, while still gaining much of the signet/aura benefits I was using before (on-demand Swiftness and Fury, and later Protection).

Casting Signet of Fire provides the following for me:
Swiftness
Fury
Fire Shield
Burning
Vulnerability
+20% damage (Piercing Shards)
+5% damage (Ember’s Might)

My question to you is: do you think this set-up is more efficient for solo-leveling via questing than going with a ‘lite’ version of your max-dps build?

I love the signet-aura builds in PvE (I ran the 20-10-30-0-10, but am considering trying with 30 in water instead of earth).

The problem is that this doesn’t work well in fractals or dungeons, and I’m generally too lazy to switch builds.

In a strictly open world PvE scenario, I like a signet-aura build much better than cantrips. I feel like the damage output is significantly higher than the cantrip build.

If I play my way (which is, not dungeons), then I immediately don’t have access to the majority of endgame armor skins, which seems to be against their philosophy.