Guild Wars 2

Arcane Lightning might not be the best trait to choose. It sounds like 10% more damage, but instead it increases your critical damage by 10%. This means that if your normal damage is 100, your criticals would be 195 and Arcane Lightning would increase it to 205. That equals roughly 5% more damage on your critical hits compared to what you would deal without it, and at 57% citical chance (with Fury) you get a dps increase of 3% at best.

On a sidenote, if you want the Fury from combos without Persisting Flames, you could consider taking Zephyr’s Boon instead. That would make your Ice Field finishers (Frozen Ground and those from your Ice Elemental) give Fury too. Combined with Arcane Fury and Magnetic Aura, you’d have perma Fury too.

Chaosky.5276:

ThiBash.5634:

Chaosky.5276:

I’m referring to the ability to swap between a ranged and melee weapon set.

And I’m telling you we don’t need that. We have other ways to cope with that. Wheter those ways are up to the task is another discussion.

Vapor Blade doesn’t grant you a ranged playstyle, no more than Evasive Arcana grants a staff user a melee playstyle. That’s a big deal because melee to ranged offers versatility, and ranged to melee offers damage and/or reliability.

If you had been talking about conjures, I’d agree that the potential is there and leave it at that, but you weren’t.

I’m not talking about Vapor Blade. The skills I’m talking about are Ride the Lightning, Frost Aura and Magnetic Grasp. Combine them with utilities (like Arcane Blast, signets or conjures) and you can actually accomplish something at range. This should of course be part of a bigger plan to close the gap, not to be used as a standalone tactic. But that goes for other professions too: very often the ranged weapon is merely a temporary set until melee is initiated, or vice versa.

Grevender.9235:

ThiBash.5634:

has been proven to be untrue.

by who?

By you. You keep on adding more restrictions to your ‘everything by everyone’ claim. First it’s the entire game, then it’s just WvW, then you claim sigil of ice on a warrior can do better than Frozen Ground (which you mistakenly thought was part of Frost Bow) even though the ele could take the exact same sigil AND frozen ground.

And I’m not making any of that stuff up, just read back your posts, it’s all there. Everything by everyone apparently means WvW using sigils only. If you’d have mentioned that from the start, I wouldn’t have wasted so many posts arguing with you.

Nikkinella.8254:

IF a meteor actually hits someone. And that’s a big if. I’ve stood inside metoer showers on plenty of occasions and not been hit even once. And I used to main ele since beta, back when it was actually somewhat decent. Recently switched to warrior because of how crap ele has become. Haven’t even played warrior for that long and already can tell its way better at everything ele can do with far less effort. Ele is a lot more fun though. And I’ve downed a group of 5 with 1 combustive shot. Good luck doing that with meteor shower. Pray to all 6 gods and hope one of them actually hits someone and you might down 1 or 2 people who will immediately be ressed by the ones that live.

If you hit 5 people with that super-slow arrow they weren’t a threat to begin with. I’m sorry ele wasn’t your thing, but not everyone can actually play them well.

Nikkinella.8254:

Of course a zergling thinks ele is ok. If you’re hiding in the safety of the zerg, even the crappiest class in the game seems fine. Try roaming. I know it’s scary for you being a zergling, but just try to separate yourself from the pack and go roaming around. Then you’ll see just how truly crap ele is compared to other classes.

Funny how including a single word into a sentence suddenly means that I’m a zergling. What makes you think that’s all I do? I duel with staff and am quite skilled at it, because I actually took the time to learn how it works. Unlike you warriornoobs that dismiss something if it doesn’t work in the first 5 seconds.

And on a sidenote, what makes you think that going about all by yourself actually accomplishes anything meaningful?

Oh and btw Combustive Shot > Meteor Shower in terms of AoE damage.

You can only hit up to 5 targets with your little arrow. I can hit 5 targets per meteor.

Tei.1704:

Agreed, but I say ele is still good for any wvw play from solo to zergs. If you’re alone, you can build yourself to not have any glaring weaknesses. A lot of builds can be hard countered by something very simple. There isn’t any one thing that is going to kill me without some amount of effort or trouble. My guildmates don’t ask me to roam WvW in small groups to be nice, use me as bait or relegate me to siege. I am legitimately very useful in fights because I literally do everything.

This one speaks the truth.

Daggers if you like close range.
Scepter/Dagger if you like range but not complex gameplay.
Staff if you like very complex gameplay through the use of combo fields and finishers. Be advised that you’ll have to master them perfectly to be truly powerful though, and even then people will not notice what you do. They just claim warriors outperform you. But it can be fun, if that’s your style of play.

And we have another needlessly complex change to the game! And what did they win this time? That’s right Larry, their suggestion will not be implemented as soon as possible!

What you’re suggesting is simply vulnerability in a different flavor.

Ever considered that not having damage types is a good thing? Rather than having mobs with specific resistances that require specific party setups, ArenaNet decided it would force parties into certain compositions and wisely decided not to implement it.

For you others, we HAVE elemental damage types, but they come in the form of combo fields rather than damage types. And it works MUCH better.

There’s probably an optimal choice, but you can ask yourself this: how much time will it save you? If it’s less than a minute over the whole dungeon, then it may not be worth stressing out over it. :-)

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

DD and DPS are two different things.

Damage dealer would refer to burst damage, high spike damage but low damage output in that downtime.

Damage dealer means ‘someone that specializes in dealing damage’. What you’re describing is ‘burst damage’ or ‘spike damage’.

Damage per second is the classes ability to constantly deal a set amount of damage with low or non existent downtime.

Damage per second is the damage dealt by something during a longer period (say, th entire fight) and the averaged out per second.

That high downtime the ele has on damage dealing abilities kills ele in WvW and PvP in a larger group.

Wrong, you just have to learn to cope in the meantime.

Eles only do good 1v1 and PvE, and with more and more things becoming immune to conditions which kills half our damage (and no extra damage in a party anyway since everyone bleeds), Ele is quickly becoming an obsolete class.

Wrong. We can do just fine without conditions.

It already has no place in dungeons or world bosses, and is only good for support elsewhere.

Wrong. World bosses get hit by all the meteors from Meteor Shower and Ice Bow. The damage they deal is insane. Try the burrows in Ascalonian Catacombs and you’ll see what kind of effects those spells have on structure-like targets.

Even if you wanted to argue FGS makes it better, it’s really not worth the 3 minute cooldown for 30 seconds of increased damage.

Wrong. A single use lasts for 60 seconds and you get 2 of them. That’s a 65% uptime. However, this alone shows that you’ve no idea what you’re talking about.

I can understand the other elites having a very high cooldown, they’re there to save you in a pinch, but the FGS cooldown would need to be lowered before it’s even considered as a serious weapon for ele

Wrong. Learn to use it properly.

If you’re pumping out more dps than a warrior, then he’s doing it wrong, very, very wrong.

Wrong. Lightning Hammer has been proven to outperform or at least match warrior dps under the right circumstances.

EDIT: And with dps I mean dps under the commonly accepted definition, not yours.

Your statement:

Elementalist is the less efficient fighting class in a combat-based game, which requires more efforts to get inferior results and is surpassed in everything by everyone else

has been proven to be untrue. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go enjoy WvW with my server, Seafarer’s Rest (perhaps you’ve heard of them, they’re the top European server atm) and farm tons of rank points with my Meteor Shower from the safety of the zerg. Meanwhile, enjoy staring at your off-cooldown Hundred Blades which you can never use because the second you step forward you get spiked down. For the rest of the discussion, I’ll kindly refer you to my signature. Oh, and because you’ve shown a tendency to misinterpet even basic things: I mean the second row, not the first one. From the top.

Most of those changes make sense. Some are just silly. You should know why conjured weapons cannot be made like engineer kits, why ride the lightning shouldn’t have 1500 range and why another daze for dagger Air is just too much.

Chaosky.5276:

I’m referring to the ability to swap between a ranged and melee weapon set.

And I’m telling you we don’t need that. We have other ways to cope with that. Wheter those ways are up to the task is another discussion.

Grevender.9235:

Ok. Show me how well a warrior can cause chill on a group at 1200 range and I’ll yield.

superior sigil of ice. And it doesn’t even fade out after 60 secs or 15 uses :\

If you’re seriously suggesting that Sigil of Ice is better than Frozen Ground then you’re the one who’s delusional. Then again, you obviously think I was referring to the Frost Bow rather than the staff itself so you’re forgiven.

And how about those burrows in AC. Can a Ranger outdps a Frost Bow?

this must be some reference to PvE world, sorry I only WvW.
Get out of PvE, reality will teach you way better than anyone in this forum – me included – can ever do.

Ok, so now everything and everyone is suddenly limited to WvW only? No wait, reality is limited to WvW only. Very well, a WvW example then. Can a warrior AoE stun at 1200 range?

ARM.3912:

You are rattling off imaginary numbers for an imaginary situation, neither of which will ever happen. Is your point that you can imagine? Grats bro. I can imagine competent staff at Anet too, doesn’t mean it is going to happen.

Fine dude. Ask ArenaNet to triple the damage on our skills then. Doesn’t matter anyway because they won’t hit. Then again, you don’t even know how much damage the skills do because you never hit with them anyway. The reason I’m rattling numbers is to show that the fact that we deal no damage isn’t due to the numbers not being high enough. It’s because our skills don’t hit very often. Understand what I’m saying now, or do I have to use Dora the Explorer language for you?

STRanger.5120:

So there’s only one conclusion:

We can only hope that Anet finally realizes that the apparent OPness of the Ele (or what is causing them to nerf us constantly) is not caused by the class, but the player quality of this class (Imho there’s much more skilled players among Elementalists than there is among any other class, and less skilled players tend to leave Ele for “easier” options, such as Guardians/Warriors/Thieves).

Agreed. I’d prefer the changes to be to thing like casting speed, casting delay and things like Meteor Shower’s range of the individual meteors.

Grevender.9235:

nice attempt, but I am feeling genererous: “a reality in which Elementalist is the less efficient fighting class in a combat-based game, which requires more efforts to get inferior results and is surpassed in everything by everyone else”.

Ok. Show me how well a warrior can cause chill on a group at 1200 range and I’ll yield. In fact, make it any snare. Because the elementalist is surpassed in everything by everyone right?

And how about those burrows in AC. Can a Ranger outdps a Frost Bow? Everything by everyone?

STRanger.5120:

From the technical and purely theoretical point of view, that’s right.
But I doubt that meteor shower will be able to hit single-target consistently, ever, so if you think about it as a person, not a machine, you’ll see a flaw in that statement, a big one.
Nevertheless, your calculation of theoretical meteor shower dmg is nice, but have you tried to look on my video I posted and calculate the possible dmg for 100B the same way?
106k caused to single-target multiplied by 3 (maximum of targets hit) = 318K of damage, and under much more realistic conditions than the 240K of the meteor shower (I guess that everybody knows that hitting 3 targets for 3.5 seconds on the same spot is at least “doable” when compared to landing 24 meteors to 5 targets within quite a big AOE space and within the huge timeframe meteor requires).

Agreed.

Grevender.9235:

oh well, at least I appreciate you finally admit being in denial.
Sadly, objective reality do exists despite you acknowledging it or not….

You mean your reality, which consists of nothing but 1v1 duels?

7.5/10. Your armor looks nicely matched, but the flame gloves kinda ruin it for me, sorry.

I’m guessing the Fresh Air scepter build is the best ‘burst’ we have at the moment.

Zelyhn

Hence I need more coffee.

I can relate to that.

UltraHiDef

Keep in mind, one guy said his ele here says his “support” staff ele out-dps’s a warrior.

I do agree that is nonsense.

STRanger.5120:

I understand that, and I agree
Still I think that the main problem of the Elementalist class is the arcane traitline problem and also quite big number of traits/skills which don’t work as intended/don’t work at all since the beta.

My opinion is that for a game to be succesful and entertaining, it should be fixed first, not adding content again and again and leave bugs where they are…

It seems we’re not as far apart as I initially feared we were. I would love for a few fortnight patches to fix the things in the game, rather than adding new content that adds even more frustrating things.

Actually, 1 content patch and 1 fix patch per month would be ideal to me.

LordByron.8369:

No ….

Dungeons = skip and stack.
Fotm are mostly played legit…there are many cheat but requires usually more effort that doing it legit.

Guess I’m playing with the wrong players then. I cringe everytime a group wants to run around the cage in the Dredge fractal and try to activate the console from the other side.

Or worse, skip the fractal entirely. I would love to go along on a fractal with one of your teams someday.

STRanger.5120:

I’m just not agreeing with comparing meteor/ice bow #4/churning earth to 100B, because those are totally different skills, by usage, purpose, CD, conditions required etc.

Nothing more m8.

But you at least do agree that they deal a lot of damage, it’s their hitting a single target that’s the issue right? That means that technically, we’re doing massive damage. We’re just not hitting anything.

Grevender.9235:

punching the air won’t make you win any war. A single warrior can output way more damage than you can ever dream with your Elementalist WHILE having up to 41k HP and over 4k armor AND more than 600hp regen per second.
I repeat: go and duel some competent players, that will teach you reality.

I reject your reality and substitute it with my own: 1v1 duelling isn’t the only way to play Guild Wars 2, in fact the game is designed around teamplay. Eles deal massive damage to multiple targets but the circumstances have to be right. 1v1 isn’t the place where eles deal their massive damage.

Hence the 24 meteors * 5 targets each * 2000 damage per meteor…

STRanger.5120:

Of course not, nobody said that, it was just an example. It’s the player that decides what character will do, and if you put two players with the same experience against each other, one with Ele and one with other class, who will win?
And I understand that Ele is more complex than other classes, and that is EXACTLY the reason why the correctly played fight should be rewarded, not causing more nerfs by devs.
Ele was OP once, it was during BWE1, where Staff Ele was ridiculously destroying anything, and Anet nerfed it (I agree with that). But most of the patches since then nerfed the class more, or maybe every patch, while buffing the others at least a bit. Does that seem normal and correct for you?

I can agree with you on that. I’m not against buffing where it’s needed. The one issue I have is that this contant negativity on eles is getting a little out of control. There’s a few things that need fixing, true. There’s also a few things that can be fixed by people shaping up and trying new things. And what I dislike most of all is all those people that simply aren’t great players to demand major changes to the ele that just aren’t feasible to implement.

I’m sorry if that makes me a little (a lot?) agressive towards critics. I just refuse to play Lightning Hammer if the only reason for doing so is because the meta doesn’t notice what else I bring to a fight.

Which is also why I want an objective measurement of the dps of a staff, instead of an emotion induced one. I want to know where we stand, not how warriors feel.

You’re now purposefully misinterpeting my comment. We’re saying the exact same thing yet you accuse me of not agreeing with you.

Most of what you say makes sense but let’s be honest here. When you fight a d/d ele, do you prepare for a 5 second immobilize?

Again, I get that there are ways to counter a move, but that doesn’t mean that the counter will always be used effectively. The warriors you mentioned will probably escape it. Not every opponent will be so lucky or skilled. That was my original point: just because something can be countered doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bring it.

Are you purposefully missing my point? What I’m saying is that we’re already doing massive damage, we’re just not hitting things with it. Hence any change to this should be in the skills and not the damage itself.

It’s good to see posts like this that try and work out the things most people look down on.

No, but I mean seriously. Meteor Shower has a potential 24*5*1-3k=120-360k damage. That’s a LOT of damage. Granted, not against a single target, but I don’t think anyone could realistically expect that from an obvious artillery-style skill. Ice Bow takes down structures faster than 2 warriors with hundred blades can.

It’s not the damage that’s the issue…it’kittenting a single target with it.

The 5 eles would have to time their shields perfectly, but I agree it would be tough to harm them. Once the opponent runs out of stability they’d be home free. And that’s just 1 aura they can pull off. Imagine having fire aura and frost aura on top of that.

No, wait, I got it after all then. You actually believe most players who have never even heard of this combo will see it combo and time their condition removals perfectly for that exact moment. You do know stability doesn’t remove immobilize right?

I see. I’ll admit I never cared to go high level fractals. Mostly because at some point the only way to get past stuff is through gimmicks like stacking where mobs can’t hit you and such. I didn’t know the regen would get that high, but I suppose that’s only natural in fractals. :-)

ARM

Your imaginary numbers aren’t a fact. Hence, the lack of video.

If each meteor deals 2000 damage, and you cast it into a WvW zerg, you’ll get 24*5*2000=240,000 damage. Is that enough for you?

I suppose that would be a solution. I’ll just have to take your word for it that they’re actually skilled in 1v1 with staff, and not just a group support build you caught off-guard.

STRanger.5120:

You didn’t get the point of my post I see, that makes your post quite invalid, sorry for that…

True, I didn’t get your point. Please elaborate.

Strang.8170:

You support by ccing mobs so your party doesn´t get steamrolled, and then you drop waterfields your other team mates can blast (provided that they´ve actualy grasped the concept of blast finishers) to keep the “only deeps matter” people alive.

Speaking of which, I wonder how many people know leap and whirl finishers could heal them as well?

Grevender.9235:

yeah exactly this, gimme that freakin’ “massive damage” and I shall stop asking for A.net to keep its word.

How much more damage do Meteor Shower, Ice Bow and Churning Earth need to do before you’d call it massive?

UltraHiDef

Looks like I hit a nerve, keep it classy.

I suppose you have. Regardless, you’re not convincing me that you’re right if 3/4 of you posts consists of insults, backed up by one failing argument.

Zelyhn

All credits go to Sabull
This requires further testing though, I’ll try to confirm this asap

Tried it on the dummies today but I didn’t notice a change in behavior with or without the trait, at times I was 99% sure a 120 range meteor should have hit the golem dummy but it did not. How was this tested and are you sure it’s actually true?

UltraHiEgo

I’ve never seen so much ignorance about the mechanics of a game in a single post, I’ll educate you.

Thank you oh mighty veteran of the PvP! Let us humble be enlightened by your mere presence!

UltraConfused

First I’m talking pvp perspective here, don’t change the subject. You’ve obviously haven’t played pvp in a long time, maybe before the implementation of spectator mode.

Since when is WvW not PvP? Oh wait, that’s right! You mean sPvP. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t aware there was a rule that prohibited me from discussing anything non-sPvP. My mistake.

Ultra1Argument4Insults

Warriors have a stability skill of 40 sec cd and can stun ever 7 seconds with a stun build, ele has stability of 90 sec cd and a stun of 40 sec cd. Do I need to say anything more?

Armor of Earth, Earth’s Embrace and Rock Solid, thank you very much.

UltraRaging

And it’s your problem if you’re on t8 and expect people to not be kittens, I propably can just use entangle on you and you wouldn’t even know that you can destroy it.

Somebody’s got issues…

Cocodog.2319:

well when you think about it “jack or all trades” is just another way of saying “not very good at anything”….

True, but the common misconception is that something that can only do one thing will always be better than something that can do multiple things but less effective.

The main reason why jack of all trades don’t work as well against dungeon bosses is because said bosses are prety much immune to stuns and things like chill/weakness. Now, if such things were ‘required’ for the fights, jacks would become a lot more popular because the specialists would have to sacrifice a lot of their damage to provide the stuns. At the moment, there’s no reason to choose and thus the ‘you don’t have to choose, you can do a bit of both’ professions are left behind.

At the moment though, jacks of all trades though some trades aren’t needed is the reason why jack is such a dull boy.

But you’re also in a group that’s likely to have their own Fury/Protection boons too. So you don’t have to stress to keep up the boons all by yourself. You can just be the guy that turns their temporary boon into permanent ones by extending their duration. ;-)

The best way to do this is not. Neither the game nor the elementalist is built to be a healer. Rather, it’s just one of the many tricks you have available.

Zelyhn.8069

However Sabull just found out that the blasting staff trait boosts the radius of each meteor from 90 to an estimated 120, which increases your chances to hit.

That’s actually VERY interesting. Didn’t know that. Thanks. :-)

It’s funny how those few that can actually play the ele to the point where ‘dying to noobs’ doesn’t apply anymore are instantly ‘wrong and delusional’.

LordByron.8369

If you ever played Pve you know how bad is to fight to do more dps than a mob regen….
unless you use conjured stuff.

What kind of weak build is that? Or what mob has a regen of 1000+ per second?

UltraHiDef.4809

Have you tried this? Static only works when you move through it, and most people would use a stability, not to mention ele doesn’t have quickness like warrior. And, cripples and chills don’t lock someone in a circle.
I guess Elementalist can have damage against static objects. Have luck killing someone in 5 seconds with a Meteor Shower

Funny how when a warrior uses his stun, you do not mention stability but when an ele uses Static Field, all of a sudden stability is a viable option.

As for the not locking down and killing something in 5 seconds, that’s not the purpose of the skill. Meteor Shower is either for pressure against groups, or for area control, neither of which a 100b warrior can accomplish. That’s why Meteor Shower is useful in WvW group battles while 100b warriors twiddle their thumbs hoping someone rushes over to their side so they get a chance to fight.

As for hitting someone with Meteor Shower, it’s actually fairly easy. Just cast it at your feet and stand still. Most players will take the bait and charge you, thinking they’ll outdamage you. Because most of the warriors you encounter in the actual game aren’t nearly as powerful, skilled or smart as the guy you saw in the video. Quite the opposite.

Chaosky.5276:

What’s the point of the equivalent of 2 extra weapon swaps when we give up health, armor, and variable range for them? Not to mention that many ele skills simply aren’t as good as those of other professions.

D/D has variable range, just not of the ‘sit back and spam auto attack’ variation. Staff has Evasive Arcana for melee.

STRanger.5120:

ThiBash.5634:

Try this: Arcane Power + Elemental Surge + Hurl (blow up Rock Barrier).

Try this:

“Any cond remover/stability skill”

Well, you just wasted master trait + one utility skill, while the opponent neutralized this with one button press (and that wasn’t neccesarily utility spell)

Seems like a fair trade, right?

Oh noes! You found a counter tactic? WHAT WILL WE DO?!

Of course you can remove conditions, everybody knows that already. Just like how you can step out of the way of 100blades, or defeat mesmer phantasms so they won’t attack you anymore. A good elementalist wouldn’t open with it, but instead use it as a surprise somewhere midfight and hope the opponent blew their cooldowns on the random spam of cripple/chill/burning/etc. that came before.

Seriously, the ‘but it can be countered by x’ nonsense has to stop. There’s always a counter for everything (and if there isn’t, it should be).

Staff only works if you make use of everything you have. Use all your offensive/defensive support skills, but make sure you deal damage too. Don’t sit around in water if nobody needs healing.

silvermember.8941:

reikken.4961:

or immobilized by an ally

If you ahve to rely on an ally then the skills sucks don’t you think? I find it amazing how elementalist can rationalize certain that only negatively affect the elementalist. why is it that some ele can accept a skill that requires outside help to learn or multiple defensive skills to hit and yet no other class have a similar skill.

Try this: Arcane Power + Elemental Surge + Hurl (blow up Rock Barrier).

UltraHiDef.4809:

While Warrior can stun and do his 100B, what’s elementalist’s method to lock someone inside the circle?

Either Static Field, Frozen Ground, an Earth/Ice Elemental and/or Glyph of Elemental Power cast in earth/water so all the meteors will also snare the things they hit.

Now tell me, are those statistics with or without the increase on radius for staff attacks?

To my knowledge, the radius doesn’t get increased by blasting staff.