Guild Wars 2

Because of the versatility that comes with it. I run a mostly glyph build, meaning that by switching attunement, I can literally completely alter my playstyle. There’s always an answer for any situation, even if none of them are perfect, there’s also few cases in which I’m 100% useless.

Elfis.9102:

but in WvW it’s barely worth the cast time; very likely it will spend all its time walking around slowly, get a 500 damage attack or two off, and die.

Try the air elementals, they usually work as ranged turrets for me.

MarzAttakz.9608:

You’re also looking at things mostly from a staff perspective ThiBash, no fault in that, but please take our other weapon sets into account as well.

Fair point. I’ve been a bit too much staff focused. Sorry for that.

Taldren.7523:

No, that is completely dishonest. That is what you want me to be saying so that you can look like some kind of hero to a story of your own making.

I’m sorry?

KazNaka.4718:

The elementalist has a different form of defense than the warrior, who also has plenty of defenses. The warrior has access to shield/sword blocks, ww atk dodges (high mobility), and bursting to regain endurance. If anything, the elementalist’s active defenses requires more skill to use than the warrior’s form of defenses. Yet, skillful play is not rewarded with any DPS.

No, it is rewarded with more utility and partywide support at the same level of dps.

Sad to see you go, but in the end you gotta play what you like. If guardian fits your expectations better then by all means go for it.

It depends on what you expect them to do, because they all have different functions and purposes. For one thing, I do notice a strong increase in damage if I summon both Fire Elementals (they allow me to quickly burst down the gate controller in CoF for example) as they have good dps on stationary targets and both share might as well. On the other hand, if my party needs a tank, the greater Earth Elemental is excellent in both attracting aggro and surviving attacks. The ice elementals allow for great chill uptime. Finally, the air elementals are a bit odd in the sense that they have ranged attacks, but the greater air elemental does have a fairly spammable ranged stun and they’re pretty good at hitting moving targets.

But you gotta pick the right elemental for the job. Insofar dps go, they’re decent but their main purpose is utility.

It’s on the top of my list of things that would really improve the staff ele quality of life.

The Game Slayer.7632:

ThiBash.5634:

Taldren.7523:

Even after the hammer nerf my warrior has 500 more armor, nearly double the hitpoint, and can press just about any attack and deal more damage than my elementalist whenever he wants.

Then why don’t you go play warrior if they’re so great? Because hitting for more than 3k with my staff ele certainly isn’t a problem for me…but if it’s not working for you, why play it?

because some people enjoy certain playstyles. they want to play how they want to play while also being on a fair level of effectiveness. i shake my head at people like you.

What he wants is a warrior that looks like an elementalist. The ele has active defenses rather than higher stats. If he likes that playstyle then he must accept the lower base stats that come with them. You can shake as much as you like, but the comparison made in the post is just one of those ‘look how awesome the warrior is and you are not’ posts that I’m done shaking my head at. You want warrior effectiveness? Then go play a warrior and stop trying to tell us we’re doing everything wrong here.

Oh, I missed that. Thanks for the heads up.

From what I’ve heard, with the ranger it’s actually by design. Anet likes that you have less control over your dodges because you get the free evade.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Personally, I’m more confused about conjure earth shield than the signets. I didn’t even remember that thing existed a few days ago, when I tried it out for the first time in a year, and promptly shoved it as far away from me as I could.

Can agree with you there. It’s a tool mostly, with very specific purposes mostly aimed at cc. Some people can probably make it work, but I’m not one of them either. It was fun pulling someone in a gap in Skyhammer with it though, because they don’t expect eles to be able to do that. I’m sure the shield has a niche somewhere for someone.

Grove.2835:

Can try taking the 25% burn increase trait
40% condi duration food
10% Toxic oil/stone/crystal
Add in the 30% increase from having 30 in fire and that is + 105% burn duration.
May or may not be best freeing up that utility slot for a change in food and a trait, but its an option.

That’s actually better than my suggestion, because it also works on all your other conditions. If you bring the food though, you can probably leave the burning duration trait.

i wont complain about ele if all people inside my aoe cricle get hit by all my meteors like mobs in pve…. seriously…

That’s the challenge.

Taldren.7523:

Listen, I get what you are saying …

I think we’ve both made our points clear at this point. I’ll admit that at least some of your points have merit, but the reason why I have such a hard time jumping on the bandwagon is because I just don’t experience it in the way that you do. As they say, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.

And yes, maybe I’ve been playing staff too much. Probably played GW2 too much. But I’m having a blast (no pun intended) with it and I can hold my own. When I see that I can burst down the CoF gate controller in a few seconds on my non-zerker build, I feel my dps is fine. The past few weeks in sPvP, I dunno what the patch did to other professions or that I’ve ran into the wrong players, but I have little problems duelling on my staff ele. And I always feel like I’m at least contributing something useful to my team. And mind you, I’m not saying this to brag, I’m trying to illustrate why I feel posts like these are exagerated.

So yeah, the main reason I cannot agree with you is because I don’t experience the same issues when playing my ele. Or at least, not in as large a manner as you describe.

Hmm…interesting topic. I’d say that (lorewise), they share a kind of curiosity of how the world works. Except that they both have a completely different approach to it. Both professions are in the ‘have an answer for anything’ business. However, where the elementalist is dignified, refined and safe, the engineer is more crude and volatile.

You could say that they’re two different solutions for the same problem.

scerevisiae

that’s a pretty ridiculous argument

It was a joke.

scerevisiae.1972:

ThiBash.5634:

If you want control, you might wanna try a signet build. Or maybe team it up with conjure earth shield for even more control skills.

Not sure you’re playing the same game as the rest of us.

Yeah, I know, it sounds silly…but I’ve ran a signet build with staff before and you’d be surprised how well Signet of Earth works in combination with the other staff control stuff. And it makes landing say, an Eruption a lot easier. The main benefit of the signet build that I experienced, was that you can spec pretty offensively (signets require some fire and air traits after all) and still get good uptime of defensive boons. Try it sometime, you may like it.

Taldren, I think I have found the point at which our communication fails.

Your point of view is that, if a profession has more complex gameplay and lower defense, and they are more effective, that should be noticable in the damage. Whereas I’m stemming from the assumption that I don’t mind the extra work for the same damage if we also get good healing, support and cc options.

Basically, I think it comes down to you preferring extra damage instead, while I value the extra support/healing/combo fields more. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Basically, what I’m saying is: you get something, it’s just not damage.

Taldren.7523:

My necro hits mutliple targets for 8k (in a line) with every lifeblast …

An 8k auto attack? I’m assuming that’s all targets combined?

scerevisiae.1972:

all the vaguely defense-related stuff in glyphs is based on random chance – it’s not realiable. the elementals are terrible, die easily and are more or less completely ignorable.

I suppose it’s a matter of personal preference. Personally, I like the additional dps and conditions my elementals cause, and I happily use the ice elemental’s fields for comboing. Or watch a warrior deal little damage in PvP because my earth elemental gives me protection and him weakness and cripple.

the non-elite elemental glyph replaced with something better

I would like to point out that the lesser and greater elementals are virtually the same. The elite version has one or 2 extra abilities, but you’d be surprised how much utility remains on the lesser versions.

Don’t get me wrong though, I wouldn’t mind if glyphs got buffed even more. But for me personally, they do plenty. But I can understand that they’re not for everyone.

Ravenmoon.5318:

They are actually doing it already. Heard some Tengu’s discussing the living story ^^

Cool…which ones? I wanna check them out.

Yeah, I feared I might get an answer like that. Thing is, I can’t really see any of the macros as a true player advantage. The second may indeed be close to a gameplay advantage, but if the delay were similar to a player pressing a key twice, the net gain would be 0. However, given ArenaNet’s strict policy I don’t want to risk it.

Thanks for answering my question.

At this point in the game, I don’t think it would be a good addition. The zones are too small and filled for mounts to not be out of place. It’d just cause too many technical issues I fear.

Moonrabbit.1543:

GoEP works great! I can keep burning up almost continuously on targets for 30/45s. Thanks for the info.

You’re welcome. Glad you like it. The benefit of the skill is that, if you end up in a party that has more than enough burning, you can always use it in, say Air, and get perma weakness.

The following question has be asked to ArenaNet by e-mail, but the response was that I should use my own judgment based on the rules stated by Gaile on these forums. However, I cannot decide and so I am asking you, my fellow players, these questions:

-Is it allowed to make a macro that does a chat emote through the press of a single button?

-Is it allowed to make a macro that makes a button act as a doubleclick (i.e. instead of pressing 4 twice to make Magnetic Shield trigger, make a single button press act as if I pressed the button twice)?

-Is it allowed to pre-program a song for the ingame music instruments (given that they in no way provide any benefit and are for entertainment purposes only)?

Currently, I’m using something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImgboR1gjDAEFwYiQRFPUeszM2A-TcAg0CmI6S5lzLTXDRA

which basically allows me to change my tactic based on my opponent. The elementals cause quite a bit of conditions and boons and combined with GoEP they can do a lot to hinder the target. The only downside is that they can be kinda slow, so often you’ll want a greater Air elemental and a lesser Ice elemental. However, they all have snares and earth causes weakness/protection too (making them great against warriors and thieves). Zephyr’s Boon basically gives me permafury when combined with Arcane Fury through Magnetic Aura alone, although I can double it up with blast finisher/ice field for another boon.

The most important thing however is to make sure you hit stuff and the glyphs go a long way in making that happen. As for tactics, I usually cast a meteor shower on my own location while in armor of earth…you’d be surprised how many people fall for that and melee you.

The best thing I can come up with would be Glyph of Elemental Power. It’ll allow you to add burning regardless of attunement and doesn’t rely on criticals. Other options could be to use projectile finishers through your fire fields (for example, placing Ring of Fire and then using Rock Barrier to cause 5 seconds of burning).

The thing is, when you’re in groups, chances are high that the targer will have permanent burning (even if only through your fire field with projectile finisher) so any burning extension skills/ traits will be fairly pointless. apart from that, if you really have that much crit, things shouldn’t stay alive long enough in solo PvE to actually need a long burning duration anyway.

Oh, and there’s of course Evasive Arcana dodge roll…but I got a feeling you’re not using that.

It’d be a cool addition, even moreso if it were part of a big ‘player housing’ update.

extreme.8526:

I would like to say however that just because ele has 20 skills to rotate over and if the class would get another swap does not automatically make him OP.

Disagree. Seeing as how some sets have many blast finishers, and some sets many fields, this could case problems. Imagine swapping from staff to scepter/dagger, which would allow 4 or 5 blast finishers in a water field. Not only would you heal more than your healing skill, you’d also do a ton of damage with them near you. Even out of combat swapping could be abused, allowing for stuff like boon stacking through combo fields and having the entire party start off with 2 minutes of fury and 25 might.

The most important reason not to allow weapon swapping for eles it is because ArenaNet has specifically stated they want to limit the number of potential skill combinations. Weapon swapping on eles would essentially break that rule since, allowing for 20*20=400 new skill combinations that have to be balanced.

There have been a few posts in the past with ArenaNet saying they were looking for a good way to tell the past Living Story to new players. One thing that was suggested was a historian, but I’ve had an idea that might tie in more with an actual ‘living world’.

The idea is basically: rumors.

Rather than having the story being told at fixed locations by fixed dialogue, why not implement a system where any npc duo has a chance to randomly discuss something that happened in the Living Story? Something like:

“Remember that Charr that walked through town the other day?”
“You mean the one with the baby devourer following her?”
“Yeah. Heard she went off to fight some dragon in Sparkfly Fen or something.”
“What I’ve heard is that she’s gone back to the Black Citadel. Never learned if she was actually succesful.”

But better written of course. The idea is that all npc duos in the game get their texts from the same source, and randomly share these lore hints as ‘conversation’. Not only would this gradually inform players of the happenings in the game, but it would also make the world feel more alive because it gives the impression that news travels. Another example could be:

“Ever been to Divinity’s Reach?”
“The human capital? No I haven’t.”
“I was there during Queen’s Jubilee. They had some fancy watchwork knights that ended up thrashing the place.”
“Sounds terrible. I hope they punished the person responsible?”
“Last I heard they punished a minstrel and his golem, though if you ask me that sylvari Scarlet was the real cause.”

And so on. All of the comments are generic enough that they could be voiced anywhere, or at least in every major city. The main issue I can see with this is that voice acting would need to be done for each possible npc race/gender, but I don’t think the players would mind it much if most of it were text based only.

So what do you think?

The pricing does seem a bit…high. Maybe it’d got something to do with the game economy, but even so you wonder why they’re making these things in the first place if there’s just nothing worth using it on? Other than the infusions of course.

With the stat increases being as small as they are, I’m not in a hurry to get my armor finished. But it’s the time gating that’s the worst of it, not the prices.

Electro.4173:

Soothing Mist already persists after swapping attunement as it is, so while SM is decent Lingering Elements doesn’t even do anything with it.

With lingering elements, it keeps getting refreshed for 5 seconds after you swap from water. That means you 5 additional seconds to swap back before you lose the buff. Soothing Mist’s duration is 10 seconds, meaning that unless you swap back on recharge, you won’t get full uptime. The extra 5 seconds give you extra time before you have to swap back again. Basically, it’s a gap filler.

Electro.4173:

And that’s “broken”, really? You’re basically locking yourself into fighting in a single element 80% of the time in exchange for a 3-second period of 40% boosted damage every 13 (approximately) seconds on another single element.

I can imagine it being fairly powerful in a Fresh Air build, which is already about spiking down targets…imagine if that got a 40% boost.

You can also go to the Heart of the Mists and try out what traits do. With the new dynamic tooltips, you can see the effects of most of the traits and being a PvP area, respeccing won’t cost you anything.

cheshirefox.7026:

i enjoy putting my head in the sand and thinking my elementalist could only ever lose to chuck norris

Maybe Chuck Norris plays an elementalist…

oZii.2864:

Soldier = Defensive

…

Celestial = Want something but don’t want full offense or full defense.

Why do you consider Soldier defensive rather than balanced? Because to me, it having Power as major and 2 defensive stats as minor made it feel like balanced gear. I used that assumption to compare celestial to it (being the other balanced stats) and found that their dps was roughly similar for my ele. It seemed to make sense but I take it you still find it more defensive because it has 2 defensive stats and 1 offensive?

There’s been a lot of talk about vertical and horizontal progression, but there’s another kind of progression that could be applied to the game: storyline progression. I’ll explain what I mean by telling a story that makes me feel old.

enter black and white
Back in the day, when rpgs were mostly top view, there was this game for the Super Nintendo called ‘Chrono Trigger’. It was a Final Fantasy-style turn-based rpg that included time travelling. Even back then, it had multiple story paths and about 10 different endings or so. Things you did in the past affected the future as you may expect, but the plot went deeper than that.

There’s a particular part in the ‘middle ages’, where the player team recruits ‘the Hero’. This hero (who happened to be a frog) then went to get a legendary sword, which only the true hero could wield. A bit later in the game, when the players travel further back in time to a magical kingdom, they use a dagger to destroy a machine that would otherwise end up destroying the world. When they struck the machine with the dagger, two spirits come out, revealing the dagger to be the legendary sword the player has already found in the future.
back to present

There used to be great satisfaction in finishing a game. There was levelling and vertical progression of course, but the main focus was the story progress. With the absence of new looks and stats just being a few numbers, the main drive was to ‘see what happens next’. In the case of Chrono Trigger, people would play it multiple times just to see the different endings (which didn’t all require to replay the gam in its entirety thanks to the time travel plot).

My main point is that, to some of us, the progression of the story is the most important thing. Like reading a good book, a game can tell an amazing story. Finding new NPC’s that share a small bit of lore can be very rewarding. Guild Wars 1, especially the later War in Kryta and Winds of Change storylines, were about story progression rather than character progression. And that too, is a way to move forward. To keep people interested, to keep them playing. The lore forums are pretty stale because not enough happens to actually talk about. And like the legendary sword from Chorno Trigger, you can reveal quite a lot early on and still surprise your audience later.

The basis of rpgs used to be the story. And seeing how it worked very well 20 years ago…why not give it another try now?

FrownyClown.8402:

No disrecpect thibash but please don’t assume I cry on the forums without merit. I do well in WvW and I actually do alright in tpvp matches but there have been multiple 1V1 instances where nothing I did mattered and I am one of the better dd eles out there . I think this patch did nothing for us, even made thief stronger in some aspects. Eles still need balancing in my opinion.

My apologies, I didn’t mean to call you a whiner. Quite the opposite, I meant to support you. I don’t think it’s fair for others to call you useless based on profession alone. I’m sure you’re a decent player at least, I’ve no reason to assume otherwise.

Well, technically, since our cooldowns are generally longer, we do benefit more from cooldown reduction traits than other professions. 20% of 40 seconds is 10 times as much as 20% of 4 seconds…

scerevisiae.1972:

In order to really open up builds, Ele needs better defense options spread across glyphs and signets, focus and staff skills, and/or fire, earth and air traits.

Glyphs can be traited to give (defensive) boons. They can also cause chill, weakness and/or blindness. The elementals can also heal and/or apply protection. There’s plenty of defensive options in glyphs.

If you want control, you might wanna try a signet build. Or maybe team it up with conjure earth shield for even more control skills.

Taldren.7523:

This patch has been a dismal failure outside of FGS being castable on the move. It didn’t reduce the reliance on Arcana or Water.

They finally changed that? Wow, that’s good news.

FrownyClown.8402:

Just from my experience with the patch in a tpvp setting, it didn’t matter how good I was. I’ve been told to stop playing ele because it hurts the team and I’ve been blamed for a teams loss even when my entire team was kind of bad and up against 3 necros.

Why do you let them get to you so much? If it’s that obvious they’re bad players, then their opinions shouldn’t matter right? You know what the real story is.

The protest was an idea if people were interested but obviously its not going to happen.

That’s because I make decisions based on facts and good arguments, not people whining about other people’s performance in PvP…especially if they themselves aren’t something to write home about either. It’ll always happen, because it’s much easier to blame someone else than it is to blame yourself.

Taldren.7523:

Even after the hammer nerf my warrior has 500 more armor, nearly double the hitpoint, and can press just about any attack and deal more damage than my elementalist whenever he wants.

Then why don’t you go play warrior if they’re so great? Because hitting for more than 3k with my staff ele certainly isn’t a problem for me…but if it’s not working for you, why play it?

Malcastus.6240:

A mechanism that kicks in everytime you switch attunements with four different effects.

So basically what you’re saying is: Elemental Attunement and the 5pt attunement traits.

STRanger.5120:

And the other thing, while you switch att to heal up, you lock yourself from putting the pressure on opponent, thanks to our “triple-balanced” class mechanic….

On staff, you can partially solve that by also placing an Ice Spike at your healing location. That way, you can either force your opponent to back off or to take a pretty substantial hit. It’s not great pressure, but it’s ok for an otherwise defensive attunement.

If they ever added a blast finisher to that…

reikken.4961:

oh cool
but is this more damage than ogre?

Good question. That would depend on the Rock Dog’s dps as well.

I think it’s a failry complex puzzle which ultimately comes down on how many conditions you cause. For myself, I’ve determined in the past that because I use staff, and thus relatively little conditions, full celestial wasn’t optimal for me. Instead, I went for Soldier’s gear, with a mix of celestial, berserker and cleric trinkets.

However, given that dagger and scepter have a much larger condition component, celestial may end up being better for them.

Ultimately though, I suspect the actual difference will be very small. ArenaNet isn’t stupid, and the actual dps of celestial in my back-of-paper-napkin calculations seemed awfully close to that of PVT.

The issues you mention have lessened in sPvP since the recent patch. Wheter that was by accident or by design I’ll leave up to you.

Our balance mechanic is supposed to be heals, and whatever setup doesn’t have them (focus) gets other defenses in return. Wheter that’s sufficient is another matter of course, but I’m not sure adding blocks/evades would neccesarily result in a better playable or more fun profession. Frankly, I find guardians a bit boring in that respect.

Anierna.6918:

It’s only in the area in between, in 1vs2 or 2vs3, that we have issues, since multiple opponents always target us first. Lots of classes have advantages over us there. Being pretty decent in duels and zergs, but horrible in small-scale group combat doesn’t seem so bad to me.

Gotta agree with this, and frankly, I don’t see why not being able to take on multiple opponents at the same time is such a big issue. When you stop and think about it, is it realistic to ask for a profession that can take on multiple opponents in a game that’s supposed to be balanced? Of course not.

Normally Anierna and I disagree, but in this case, what he says makes sense. Protests are unneccesary. Though there’s still room for improvement, things are better since the recent patch. I can’t determine is wheter that’s due to other profession’s nerfs or our own changes, but I fear it’s the former.