Guild Wars 2

The recharge idea may work if it affected all your skills while in a certain attunement. That would include utility skills and conjure weapon skills. However, it would have to be 20pt skills at least. And maybe 10%.

Apart from the usual (make use of combo fields, evasive arcana, etc.) I’ve found that Glyph of Elemental Power works very well with the staff. The snares and earth/water cast glyph can cause help out a lot in hitting your targets, both in 1 vs 1 and targetting larger groups (since the glyph’s cooldown is per target, not as a whole).

PVT will do well, but you may wanna consider Celestial Gear on your trinkets. The dps is roughly the same, but you’ll get some extra healing power for your water fields and regen boons that your party can benefit from.

The concept seems viable and if anything, I commend you for trying something different.

One thing you may or may not have thought about, is that earth scepter 2 combines pretty well with radiation field. The result will be 5 seconds of extra poison. To ensure optimal use of poison, the key is to combo with the radiation field as much as possible.

Another option could be to use Sigil of Doom on your weapon. Since eles swap attunements fairly often, this could provide a good chunk of poison to your build.

If I could travel there for free, I’d make Divinity’s Reach my go-to place.

Vayne.8563:

So how long after Rift launched was it before Trion added player housing? It’ll get here when it gets here.

Except it was firts promised to be in the game, then promised to be added really soon. Then we hear they’re not even working on it, and we’re still waiting.

I can understand that Sotzz isn’t removed, but what I don’t understand is that Yanonka was added AFTER Anet got so much feedback stating that hidden impossible to find bounty bosses aren’t fun.

Any thoughts?

xbaunx

We’re asking Ele’s to gather all weapon sets, master 60 skills, learn 60 cooldown timings, master 3 play styles, 3 types of range (and maneuverability best suited for each range), and develop a trait scheme that lends itself a little bit to all 3 play styles but commits to none. Ele must do this just to be on par with the other classes

You’re overestimating other classes. They too have weapon specific traits that leads to certain build. A ranger specializing in longbows is less effective when he swaps to a greatsword compared to a a ranger specialized in greatswords, and vice versa.

eldain stenlund

This class is obviously badly implemented.

Not really. However, it’s often misunderstood, especially by newer players.

Josh Foreman.8250:

How did you defeat the big rabbit?! I can’t get past the first round of carrots.

These few words should be on every advertisement.

Funny how people complain even when developers add free content in their spare time. You’d think they’d be happy that they were working on the game when they’re not working on the game.

Guess some people are never happy.

Ah, I’ve misinterpeted it then. My apologies.

Gorni.1764:

I said that compared to Elites from other classes (and also Fire and Water-Elemental) these effects are quite mediocre… doubling dmg with two elementals? Nope Especially not in PvP.
In zerg-situations you shouldn’t even think about popping an elemental since it will die in less time than it takes casting it. And in 1v1 why would you pop earth or air when you can have quite acceptable dmg through fire or nice heal and more reliant cc from water?

The main issue with elementals is that they have a tough time catching their targets. And when they do, you’d rather have longer lasting snares (earth’s cripple) than shorter (ice’s chill), and as a bonus it covers its snare with other conditions. That’s also why air isn’t as worthless as it may seem, especially since it’s knockdown is relatively spammable. Fire’s actually the worst, since it has neither range nor snares, but a very lengthy power attack that even crawling opponents will avoid.

As for the zerg, that’s where air elementals shine too. They stick with you on the backline instead of rushing into melee, thus lasting longer.

Not saying that your strategy is worthless. In fact, I feel that the fact that we both use elementals in a different way shows the greatest strength of glyphs: you can use them in many different ways.

Part of comment removed due to misinterpetation on the author’s part (a.k.a. I wrote down something stupid).

Gorni.1764:

random stun that lasts for 1s and dmg that is lower than that of a lvl10 npc, crippling and weakness lol … compare that to elites from other classes.

So what you’re saying is that dodging and kiting aren’t the main issue that non-D/D eles face, and hence crippling, stun and weakness are useless?

As for the damage, sure it’s not gamebreaking…until you get two of them up, and suddenly your dps more than doubled. Yeah, useless.

The reason I’m probably ‘picking it up’ is to thank ArenaNet for the Super Adventure Box. You know, because that was free…and quite awesome too.

Ok, thank you for your answers.

Gorni.1764:

(earth elemental useless though, same goes for air).

Air has a ranged stun and ranged attacks (which when used properly by the player can help it stay alive a lot longer).
Earth grants AoE protection, causes cripple and weakness. I’d hardly call that useless.

Does anyone know wheter the gemstore mining pick will ‘grow’ with new levels of ore being released? Kinda like how legendary weapons will be upgraded?

Claudia De Anar.6304:

We are a Squishy Class we are expected to play back liners and we should have a decent Ranged Weapon.

We’re not a squishy class. We only have squishy armor. Our active defenses are among the best in the game.

We’re also not expected to play backliners. The only weapon that’s truly for backlining is the staff. That’s only 1 out of 4 weapons. The rest is midrange.

We have a decent ranged weapon. It’s the staff. The good thing about the staff is that it’s not just about damage, but has a ton of utility…but the catch is that you need to work with a team. What you’re asking for is basically for artillery to fight solo. That’s not what artillery was made for. Artillery hides behind the army in order to function properly.

Sorry to say it, but you just don’t get the staff, and you don’t get the elementalist. We’re NOT a World of Kittencraft mage. We’re something new.

scottmana.7658:

That is because the staff suxs.

Read what Covenn wrote Scott. He gets it. You don’t.

Kaleden.9386:

Even out of combat weapon switching is pretty OP, considering how many boons we can dish out and stack. Shared cooldowns for Element/Slots would probably go a long way to reducing the ridiculous number of combos and boon-generating skills we’d have available.

The boons that are cast on ‘weapon swap’ mostly activate in combat only. As for the ‘on attunement swap’ boons, of course attunements should share cooldowns. Thirdly, the actual swapping of weapon/trait should be like a channeled spell, taking at least 3 but preferably 5 seconds.

Limiting through cooldown only isn’t a good idea, because even if you’ve got 1 attunement locked out, there’s still 15 other skills you can make combos with. From the top of my head, the most overpowered one I could think of is casting Healing Rain, then switching to scepter/focus and using some blast finishers in for a large chunk of healing.

The bottom line is, ArenaNet’s design is to limit the amount of skill combinations by spreading them across several weapons. In combat weapon switching on the elementalist would go against that policy, as the elementalist can suddenly combo almost all their skills with almost all their skills again. Coming up with some forced and complex restrictions doesn’t fix that problem.

I really think the game would benefit from loadouts that can provide out of combat weapon, gear, and trait switches (limited to trait point allocation), especially since many traits do nothing underwater.

That I agree with. And if it were made a channeled ooc-only spell, that took say 4 seconds to swap trait specs, then it wouldn’t be spammed for short term gains either.

Lindbur.2537:

On a side note, d/d isn’t melee. Melee range is considered to be 130, and the lowest range an ele can possibly have is 300.

Agree with the rest you wrote, but two of our Conjure Weapons have melee range. Just wanted to point that out. Dunno why though.

Fortus.6175:

ThiBash.5634:

a) We have a greatsword.
b) You could always roll a mesmer.

a) we dont, we have an elite
b) or not.

a) That summons a greatsword. Point is, if you want a greatsword, you can play it. If you’re just interested in a different skillset, then it shouldn’t matter what weapon’s used for it…it could be a Frying Pan.
b) Your choice, but maybe you should also ask for Turrets, Stealth, Heavy Armor and a Mini Quaggan. My point was: don’t turn the Elementalist into a Mesmer just because you’d rather have Elementalist looks with Mesmer functionality.

Fortus.6175:

key word: reliable, unless their movement keys dont work, neither will shockwave, eruption, ice spike hit any enemy, as for blinding surge it can hit, yes, but more often that not people will dodge it seen they can see it coming for 2 seconds in whcih you are doing NO damage

When it comes to PvE/dungeons, hitting isn’t a problem. As for WvW, hitting is tougher 1vs1 but the same can be said for Lava Font and Meteor Shower and if anything, damage is not the thing that will decide the duel. Utility will. Which is also why I run Glyph of Elemental Power, so I can constantly cripple or chill my targets, making them easier to hit.

As for chain lightning, it really depends on when you use it of course. It won’t automatically outdps fireball. But it’s a decent backup plan.

Oh, and if they dodge blinding surge…better! I’d rather have them waste their dodge on that than on Frozen Ground, Shockwave or Gust.

fiftypercentgrey.7108:

I thought they nerfed that, too?

Not to my knowledge. Sigil of Battle in an ele boon build stacks for quite a bit of might, and we have blast finishers and fire fields all over the place. The main reason I think people stopped bringing ‘might on cantrip cast’ is because we’re already pretty high up there without it. With fire aure gaining might on hits, one could argue eles have more might than ever.

But I digress. What I’d really like to know is why might stacking is overpowered on an engineer, but acceptable on an elementalist.

Nah, Melandru’s Gaze looks much cooler.

That could be interesting. A 1-handed weapon may be more likely though, because Anet already has to come up with 4 new skills per skill. Then again, a 2-handed weapon would eliminate the need to check for dangerous combos…

Yeah, if anything new is implemented, it’ll likely be a 2-handed weapon. And rifle would seem the best candidate since we don’t have a rifle caster yet.

Think of it this way: instead of everyone having 10% of their healing and 90% from a ‘healer’, everyone has 75% of their healing and 25% from a ‘healer’.

You can still help out your team as a ‘healer’. That 25% is still pretty useful. But you’re no longer the sole one responsable for 90% of the healing in a group.

What I don’t really get is why this is a problem, when Elementalists have already had mega might stacking since beta (and nobody complained about that).

One reason why they shouldn’t be spammable is the trait that makes them knock down on explode. If turrets are changed, then that trait should also be adjusted.

Once read about someone not bringing Blasting Staff because they preferred a smaller Static Field. Actually sounded like a valid argument not to bring Blasting Staff all the time. Though personally, I still prefer the larger AoEs.

One thing you could consider is that on jewelry, each 1% of critical damage costs a lot less stat points than on let’s say your weapon. So if you limit critical damage to just the jewels, you have some extra stats left to spend on survival.

Something like Emerald Jewelry with Sapphire gems in it could work pretty nicely.

eldain stenlund.4306:

But by pure logic.

If approached from a logic standpoint, you should probably consider effective damage instead of total damage.

For example, if your opponent is chilled, you will have a much easier time actually hitting your target and will spend less time on trying to keep yourself alive.

On a downed target, a burts combination of Meteor Shower/Ice Spike may do more effective damage because the time spent doing damage is minimized. You may deal more damage in 10 seconds using only fire than you do using Fire and the Water. But if you only need 5 seconds of damage, the burst may very well take just 4 seconds.

Fire will likely deal more damage if you can stand back and fling your spells at ease. But in actual fights, there are a lot of variables. Even seemingly tiny things like granting your entire party might or vulnerability can end up increasing the group’s damage way more than staying in Fire and tossing around fireballs.

Of course, wheter this is actually true will be very hard to either prove or disprove.

eldain stenlund.4306:

ThiBash.5634:

Why not go for something that’s not in the game yet, like a warhorn or something?

we have horn alrdy.
(using that on both my warrior and ranger).

On the elementalist, obviously.

Why not go for something that’s not in the game yet, like a warhorn or something?

How about that staff from the Honor of the Waves dungeon?

Fortus.6175:

The damage is ok, it is just that once you get out of fire you have none.

That’s also an ‘awulf’ argument. Ice Spike, Blinding Surge, Eruption, Shockwave and Chain Lightning deal plenty of damage.

Fortus.6175:

Please, give us greatsword, a long-range(1200-1500) , low control but strong single target CC, high single target with small collateral AoE damage!

a) We have a greatsword.
b) You could always roll a mesmer.

Wildclaw

And for good reason. The cantrips are fillers to begin with. We just take them because the rest of our utility is horrible (except Signet of Earth and Arcane Shield) and due to Soothing Disruption we can get some extra on demand condition removal via Cleansing Water, as well as some minor vigor. But really, the cantrips themselves are crappy enough that the main spec can’t even be bothered to reduce the cd on them.

Agree and disagree with you. The basic cantrips aren’t all that amazing, true. However, with relatively few trait points you can make them do virtually everything. The only thing that comes close are signets, and you have to pick the clunky 20 points in fire just to make them work. And even then, still no stun breakers or mass condition removals. Glyphs only get 1 boon at best per cast. Arcane skills, which are very spiky, force you to invest heavily in a non-damage attribute…

The thing that makes people pick cantrips is because it all comes together in a neat little package. You get everything you’d want without having to pick anything you’d rather do without. None of the other skill types, be it glyphs, arcane skills or signets, can make quite such a coherent build.

Sunflowers.1729:

The best thing to have would be some kind of built in toggle that works for all classes, that allows you to swap between different weapon sets out of combat. E.g. my Guardian uses a staff + GS but sometimes the range just isn’t enough and I have to equip a scepter.

This might be troublesome to implement but it’s a suggestion.

A few months back, a developer mentioned that they were working on a ooc build swapping system (including weapons) for all professions. Haven’t heard from it since, but it would fix the ele’s problem as well as giving everyone a useful tool.

jbernal.1078:

The axe is the one that I use the least as it does less than the fire sword so I just use that instead.

You can make a very nice spike with it though. Running Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave, then combine the first with skill 5 and the second with skill 4…and then follow up with skill 2.

eldain stenlund.4306:

While the other one just droped 50 % of his dmg, to get some.. utility ?
What skill combination do you use, and why does it increase my total dmg ?

This is the key phrase, really. In the beginning of your argument you state that it must be proven against moving targets, yet you automatically assume that all your spells land. Granted, the non-fire spells in general are a bit harder to land, but just about all snares are in the other attunements, so overall, the jumper will hit more often, not less. Not to mention Magnetic Aura, which will reflect a good chunk of damage back at you.

However, assuming that hitting your target isn’t that much of an issue, there’s still a few damage boosts that attunment ‘jumpers’ gain that fire mages don’t.

~Fury (near permanent in boon builds)
~Combos (a Stoning fired through a Lava Font deals as much damage as a Fireball for example)
~The 2nd slot skills from the other attunements, which deal fair (Blinding Surge) to heavy (Eruption) damage.
~Ice Spike’s vulnerability (and that of the Static Field combo) will greatly increase the dps in group fights. You may lose some, but the total damage will be higher.

As for wheter these effects compensate the damage loss, I agree with the previous posters: it’s hard to tell. However, I feel that even if it’s slightly lower, it won’t be that much that it warrants dismissing all the excellent support you gain from jumping.

EDIT: One of the nice ‘jumping’ combos you can make is casting Meteor Shower, then switch to water to gain Fury, and the cast Ice Spike. Makes your highest damage spell hit for a lot more. Again, not sure if it makes up for things, but it’s sure powerful in dungeons.

Yes there is. You can start a new character with the headpiece you want, then use regular transmutation stones to transfer the looks to a white item. The white item will not become soulbound, allowing you give it to another character. You can then use a second transmutation stone to get the look to your gear.

The introductionary lunch with the princess could be a hint to the Snes game Super Mario RPG (which was an awesome game in itself).

Ayrilana.1396:

Smaller guilds should stick to a tier that they can handle. The mobs all scale a several are better off fought with less people. Some of the mechanics are annoying but once you and everyone figure them out, it easy.

You can’t just zerg and facetank everything.

If your guild can’t scout out all if the scout-able targets then you should not be doing anything higher than a tier 1.

And what if you can’t even find that 1 boss during the 15 minute limit? Happens to us on a regular basis. Or rather, if we don’t find them within 10 minutes. There’s no point in engaging a boss if you have 1 minute left on your timer.

Finding 2 bosses with a 10-man group with time left to defeat them is tough. Finding just 1 boss for the 3k influence is undoable at times.

So get off that high horse of yours. The only thing it shows is that you get carried by your big guild. Big whoop.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

This is the correct answer. Guild content is about coordination. If you truly work together, you don’t need nearly as many people to complete this content.

I see. So poor design is now the player’s fault?

Rather buy ectos than spend 1 more second playing this ‘content’.

Still think you’ve designed a nice feature for guilds?

…for ascended earrings. Because after trying for 2 months to do the bounty, I’ve discovered that unless we somehow magically gain 50 members, our guild just isn’t gonna complete the bounties. Not that the bosses are too hard you know…just that even with 7 people using google maps, we still can’t find them in time.

Razor.6392:

in other words: both are good at doing no damage.

If you say so. At least they’re stronger than bunkers.

The difference won’t be great, but you got to keep in mind that everyone’s their own healer. So if a GW1 would heal for 100%, a GW2 healer would need to heal only 30% because the target itself heals the other 70%.

So your heals don’t have to be that strong to begin with.But that doesn’t mean they’re not helpful.

LordXy.4278:

if both PVT and Celestial have the same damage output then wouldn’t it be better to use PVT ? because PVT gives you more toughness and vitality compared to using all stats accessories. If the dmage output is almost the same then it’s better to have more survivability.

Celestial gear also gives you healing power, which is more useful for long-term survival.

Wheter PVT outperforms Celestial depends on how much conditions you cause. For example, if you play D/D and mostly go for Air for your damage, then PVT would be better. But if you use Fire more often, you’ll also have a good chunk of damage in burning, so Celestial would be better.

The main point I wanted to make though, is that the dps difference is very small. Picking one or the other is unlikely to make the difference between winning or losing a fight. The most you can say, is that PVT will be slightly better at spiking/bursting, and Celestial is better at party support (due to the added healing power). But again, the difference is marginal.

You can get the link to display by copy/pasting it in the adress bar.

As for your build, seems like it would work in PvE. Might stacking doesn’t hurt, though I must warn you that Lingering Elements is currently bugged. Also, if you’d get 5 more points in Arcana, you could get Evasive Arcana. Roll into your Lava Font while in Earth would grant you 3 might too. And your other dodges would also get effects.

As for your weapon, which sigil you’re using? Because a Sigil of Battle on your weapon could add another 9 stacks of might.