Guild Wars 2

Yeah. Let’s hope it gets explained at least (and not the: infinite blast finishers = OP answer because we knew that one already).

MrButtermancer.1624:

1: Arcana is a skill tax: without being able to quickly attunement swap, you don’t have access to much of your skill bar for the better part of a fight. The better skills in each attunement suffer huge cooldown times because it’s assumed the elementalist is using every skill in every attunement, not possible practically speaking without Arcana.

The cooldowns that matter though, are longer than your attunement cooldowns. Being able to swap more often does give you some flexibility, but it’s not like you cannot function without it.

2:Long channel times: it takes a great deal of time to channel many Elementalist skills, and this has been pointed at as one thing responsible for our low DPS. Additionally, it means you MUST play preemptively, not responsively.

That’s also what changes the playstyle. Long range weapons are per definition pre-emtive strike weapons. With daggers, the channeling time is a lot less than with staves. It balances things out, overall.

4: Elementalists are also reliant somewhat upon condition damage

If you’re talking about the staff, the actual condition damage skills can be mostly considered an afterthought. Eruption is mostly meant for combos, the bleeding is added bonus. Personally, I like to think of the few conditions skills as “…making Might not 50% useless…” and not much else besides that.

5: Elementalist abilities are “balanced” around elemental traits. you have to CHOOSE which one/ones are going to be good

Not true. There are plenty of traits that work for all attunements, and they’re by no means bad.

6: No weapon swap. Hear me out. Every other class can modify their effective range.

Staff and scepter users don’t have an effective range. They perform just as well at close range. Dagger users have a problem, true, but they also have gap closers.

Then Evasive Arcana was removed last patch. The class is garbage. Listen to me. Read my lips.

They shouldn’t have done that. Mostly because it doesn’t affect our power in any meaningful way, but it does affect our fun very much.

CyanideRayne.2413:

last time I checked fire ele from greater and lesser do the same dmg >_> please don’t spew lies it only weakens our class as a whole.

Then you’d better check again, because the (greater) Fire Elemental does more damage than the Lesser Fire Elemental. Also, the Fire Elemental has an AoE attack that the lesser one doesn’t.

There’s a big difference between the small and big elementals, but seeing as how you called them useless to begin with, I doubt you ever really paid attention to what they do. Maybe they become more interesting when you notice that their auto attacks deal roughly as much damage as the Elementalist’s own?

CurtMonash.3498:

Mainly, I think all four conjures should be replaced by a Glyph of Conjuration, which produces any of the four non-elite conjures depending on which attunement you’re in.

That would actually make me use them.

Lucky Charmz.5089:

I am under the impression that the bow and/or axe does more damage than the normal weapons when the normal weapons are buffed up by traits. (which they’re not in my build)

In my personal experience, the conjured weapons aren’t worth bringing solely for the damage (if they even do extra damage at all). The elite is quite strong of course, as it should be, but so are the alternatives.

Even if they do add extra damage, you’re giving up all your utility slots. In a cantrip build, you could use 3 cantrips and get 9 stacks of might through a fire trait. With a signet build, you get near-permanent Fury (+20% crit chance). And that’s not even counting the defensive buffs they give.

And in the end, the weapon skills are actually quite strong and useful. In my opinion, you should use conjures only when they do something you cannot achieve in other means.

Still playing the staff. Still as powerful as it was in dungeons an PvE, but a lot more boring (gameplay turned more static).

As for PvP, I now have no chance in 1v1 instead of a small chance.

Grats man!

And yeah, it’s cool it got fixed. This was the first thing I wanted to get GW2 as it was my favorite one in GW1 (got it way before EotN came out).

Peetee.9406:

Sceptre/Focus has it’s uses but they are few and far between.

The scepter has more focused damage than the staff, kinda like an inbetween of staff and daggers.

The focus is mostly for self defense, which is pretty useful for new elementalists.

reikken.4961:

the amount of crit precision gives you depends on your level. The higher your level, the more precision it takes. At 80, you need 21 precision for 1% crit.

And I have not found any cases of damage not being directly proportional to power

The I guess my fireball’s tooltip must be broken, because 3 stacks of might don’t add 105 damage to it. They only add 36 (603->639 while in town).

As for the crit, you’re probably right. Must have been a roundoff error on my part. My apologies.

No, but it was very different from the staff builds we’re now forced to play.

haviz.1340:

Don’t get me wrong, this build is solid, the theory behind it is pretty decent, but there are builds far outperforming that particular build.

Then I’d say we pretty much agree.

I doubt you’ll have time to use all of them all the time. Why not use, say, your staff for ranged attacks instead of the bow?

Lordryux.9785:

earth is just plain weak on a side note it applies weakness

Nice way to sum it up, but I’m assuming you didn’t mean it in a positive manner.

Stoning’s greatest strength is in fact that very weakness. Sure, it may only deal 2/3 of the damage that Fireball does, but your opponent will only deal 50% of their damage. So you come out ahead.

Also, Stoning is a projectile finisher, which can be useful at times. Spamming stones through a fire field for example, will double their damage (they’ll cause 1 second of burning each) and thus outperform Fireball.

noobftw.9654:

can you recommend a profession a class that can counter d/d elementalist?

There’s no ‘get-out-of-jail-free-card’ in Guild Wars 2. You’ll have to step up your game, just switching professions isn’t the answer. And even if it were, you’d have something else you’re vulnerable against.

Sabull.5670:

ThiBash.5634:

Paper napkin math suggests that 40 Power is roughly 3% more damage, wheras 40 Precision is roughly 3% more critical.

ThiBash well that is very paper napkin math. 40 power is equal to 3% more damage (direct) if you have 1333 power, which is not common.
It’s simple x% boost in power equals x% boost in damage (direct) in all cases.

Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true in this case. You’re assuming that 1 power equals +1 damage but that’s not true for all skills. The skill I used to compare it for were staff skills, and the actual % varied even between the various skills.

However, on average, all the skills gained about 3%, so that’s what I went with.

As for the critical hit, I just added 40 and then it went up by 3%.

Pyrial.2917:

Has anyone seen how much damage EA does? Yeah, neither have I. There really isn’t any reason to take the trait any longer when your rolls are producing 200-300 damage for a 30point investment.

That’s provided you actually hit something with it. Usually you’ve dodged out of range of your target, making the skill quite pointless.

On a sidenote, keep in mind that combo fields are weaker than non-combo fields because of the combos that can be made with them. So in effect, a lot of their total damage doesn’t show up, and they’re balanced around teamplay (making them weaker in 1 vs 1).

haviz.1340:

I’ve tested rather broadly those kind of builds and I consider them rather underperforming. You can easily get those boons without spending 20 trait points in trait line that is generally falling short of expectations.

The Fire trait line may be somewhat weak, but the combined effects of the signet build can be quite solid. And since you’ll be using more than one signet, you will likely get Signet of Earth which mitigates the loss of defense somewhat.

The signet build may not be your ultimate choice, and I’ll admit it isn’t mine either. But the build as a whole, does work, and is quite viable at least in dungeons and PvE.

Indeed. I do so too, especially since the cooldown reduction trait also affects Glyph of Elementals. All I’m saying about the signet is that it’s not all bad. Just depends on your build.

haviz.1340:

Actually ether renewal should be the most obvious choice againt all kinds of heavy condition dmg dealers especially if you lack cond removals. If enemy team composition is more about spike/burst damage, glyph gives you the most healing.

Fair points. However, with the signet/aura build, the signet also triggers its own passive and gives you protection AND swiftness (where with the glyph, you’d have to choose). That doesn’t make up for the glyph in terms of defense, true, but what you get in return is extra damage in the form of fury. That’s a tradeoff that can be worth it, depending on your point of view.

reikken.4961:

So basically this skill is good if you have a bunch of signet traits, and sucks if you don’t?

In a nutshell, yes. If you’re gonna use a skill, then it’ll be better if it compliments your playstyle, traits and other skills.

There will always be players and builds that prefer certain skill choices. I for one cannot fathom using Ether Renewal, but from what I’ve read, it’s quite popular to some players.

Shadowdawn.7946:

Not really on topic, but I think Zojja has a crush on Snaff.

It was more like a father-daughter relationship.

The elixir gun does feel more Asura than Charr.

Seeing as how I’m not overly full of myself, I don’t doubt that you could beat me in PvP. However, that’s just anecdotical evidence that doesn’t really say anything about the skills themselves.

Signet builds aren’t bad. They give decent passive effects and, with traits, great active effects as well.

Elementalist the best profession? Doubt it. But it does seem to take a lot more skill and effort to keep up with other classes though. So when you finally DO master that, you do get a slight edge over people who buttonmash their warriors.

Not entirely sure, but to be honest, my build isn’t exactly standard. I really like the Rune of the Golemancer (because of the golem), but that kinda locked me into a crit based build. At the moment, I think I have around 1700 Power, 33% crit, 48 critical damage and then 1500 or so toughness. My health is around 16k.

I disagree. There are range numbers on our skills, true, but they’re not as limiting on the elementalist as the numbers suggest. In fact, plenty of staff skills get more reliable at short range (gust for example). Dagger on the other hand, has so many gap closers it’s not funny anymore.

Ranges do not define our weapons in my opinion.

Kinda use all of them, as often as I can. But my favorite is dropping a field and then switch to Earth 1/5 on staves.

haviz.1340:

with fire’s embrace, zephyr’s boon, elemental shielding and written in stone. pretty bad idea because you need to take at least 1 more signet or god forbid 3 more…

Are you seriously implying that the signet/aura build is a bad idea? The earth and water signets are pretty decent snares in addition to their passive effects. Combined with said traits, they make excellent duelling skills.

sangvinu.3218:

sory for been noob but how do you buff this signet?
ty

No need to apologize. That’s what the forums are for.

Maybe, just maybe, it’d be an option to alter the ‘while in attunment X’ skills to deal slightly more damage (say, 35% instead of 20%) and then add an additional recharge to the other attunements (say +5 seconds). That would maybe create an interesting alternative, and may allow people to truly specialize.

Though to be honest, I do like the way things are now. Yes, you need to use everything you have, from dodging to swapping to combos…but it’s fun!

Marius.8052:

7) Learn to frickin dodge, seriously. Why do you still get pulled in by the LT in AC!?!?

It can be hard to see from a distances with an Earth Elemental blocking your line of sight. And then there’s times when the pre-pull animation doesn’t play at all.

Yes, dodging is important, but it’s not possible for everyone all the time. Stop making them feel like morons just because they have lag, please. Thank you very much.

If you go with scepter, you can actually get a failry high dps by speciing to condition damage and spamming skill 1.

However, that’s about as close as you’ll get to a mono-earth build because the Elementalist kinda revolves aroudn attunement swapping, and using skills from all attunements.

There is however a signet/aura build that revolves around earth traits. It’ll give you an ‘earth’ feel when using the build (especially since the signets were originally based on signet rings in GW1, so you can pretend they’re gems…which come from the earth).

For all my complaining, I feel that if they do decide to come out clean, we should compliment them for it, not bash them down further. No matter how bad we feel they may have done, if they make an honest mistake, and admit/apologize for it, we should refrain from talking them down further.

etiolate.9185:

Beyond the angle of some idea of betrayal, the change to a gear treadmill doesn’t even make sense for their pricing model.

Two words: Transmutation Stone

Even if only 10% of the players decide they like Guild Backpack better, at $1 per stone, that’s $200,000 just for changing a few numbers in a database. Not a bad revenue for 30 seconds of work right?

There’s a cool youtube video that shows a warrior one-shotting people with 24k damage hits. My question is: does anyone know what build he uses and how to make it? Or did it get nerfed recently?

Link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_rXq2LYg0

lunabaguna.8293:

Please for the love of Grenth, stop trying to turn this game into GW1.

Please for the love of Melandru, stop trying to turn this game into World of Kittencraft.

Also, I’d like to stress out that the ‘question on the gear threadmill’ is player priority number one, and thus should really be asked, ahead of any other questions that may be submitted.

I’d really appreciate it if you took took this one seriously. This may be our only shot at getting an answer, and a large number of people want to know.

Why was the Evasive Arcana gameplay removed instead of rebalanced? A lot of Elementalists liked the playstyle and they wouldn’t have minded a few (or even a lot of) nerfs. People really do miss the fun they used to have dodging about and comboing stuff.

Let’s just wait out the Reddit interview shall we? It may put us at ease. At the very least, it may get some of our questions answered.

The thing with airspeed is that it’s measured due to the difference between dynamic and static pressure. This means that it will be a relative speed because the local static pressure may vary between the two measuring points of the pitot-static tube.

Oh wait, you meant ingame. Yeah, it’s small but like they said, great for jumping puzzles.

For the umpteenth time, the problem with Glyph of Elementals is the pet AI, not the pet themselves. In fact, they already hand out aoe buffs to those around them.

Also, there’s already 2 traits that buff the glyph. But the good thing about those is that they buff all other glyphs as well.

Suppose I get one of those new ascended items, and I use a transmutation stone to transfer my guild backpack look to it.

Can I still upgrade it to the version that has +Agony resistance?

If yes, will it also take with it my guild backpack’s look?

If no, will I need to get a second item just to be able to get the upgraded version?

A cheap way to test such things would be the PvP entrance area. You can change gear for free, might svae you a few gold. ;-)

Stickin to my own guild, but I can appreciate the concept. As for special event, why not try a ‘Elemental appreciation day’ where you invite all elementalists to LA and have them summon their elementals. :-)

Maybe I can answer E. The official statement will be: “No, we don’t.” Behind the scenes, the answer’s likely the same.mBecause even after all that’s happened recently, I cannot imagine the developers not caring about the game.

And now that I think of it, part of the answer of C could be: “Glyph of Elementals is fine, but we will tweak pet AI a bit to fix some common issues.”

Creslin.1758:

The problem I have isn’t that I disagree with the “Ele sucks, go play warrior” answer, the problem is that it is well…wrong.

Yes, I totally agree. However, I also understand that this may not be everyone’s experience. What I was responding to however, was the previous poster stating that some people aren’t allowed to state their opinion.

Because to be honest, I totally agree with you. The elementalist is both amazing and fun. But I also realize that, in my guild, I’m probably one of the few, if not the only one who can actually play the profession well. That’s not to boost my own ego. But it does make me wonder wheter a more casual player may end up getting more fun out of other, less complex professions.

So in a nutshell, this thread should tell everyone how amazing we are, but warn them for the added complexity and learning curve. And a mix of both posts types, provided they argument their opinions, does that imho.

Personally, I tend to go for a mix of all stats, because that’s really what the staff does: everything.

We’re not good focussing on conditions, but we still cause them.
We’re not good focusing on heals but we still heal more than most professions.
We’re not useful if we go all bunkery, but we still need some defense.
Our attacks may not deal that much base damage, but we still got a few nice procs that justify getting more crit.
And power, of course, is always useful.

The main benefit of this is that it lowers the effect of diminishing returns. An example:

Say you deal 100 damage with a particular attack. Say that adding 10 power adds 10 damage. You now deal 110 damage, or 10% more. Now, you add another 10 power. You now add 120 damage. Another 10% more? Well, not really, because you were already doing 110 damage. So the next 10 power adds (120/110)*100%=+9.1%. This gets progressively worse the more you focus on a single statistic. The first bit you add is always the strongest, relatively speaking.

As an added bonus, it allows me to pretty much swap builds without needing to change gear.

To be honest, there aren’t that many weapons that create fields to begin with. Hence weapons that do tend to be ‘special’. And there’s a reason for that. Take fire fields for example. As you all know, each finisher shooting through it causes burning. That means that the dps potential for a fire field is far higher than for a non-field spell. Which in turn means the damage output has to be lowered in order to balance things out.

As for why there’s less finishers, I dunno. But as far as fields go, I think it’s pretty much just to make a difference between the weapons. One’s weak but can be comboed a lot, the other’s strong on its own but cannot be built upon.

The glyph itself is great. I’d use it even if the other skills were viable. The main issue however with the elementals is a generic NPC AI issue. They tend to go down too easily by random instakill mechanics. But ranger, mesmer, necro and engineering pets suffer from the same AI flaw. Even other npcs do.

So to fix that, the solution lies in changing the npc mechanics across the board. Maybe they should be able to dodge, or maybe they should get some sort of damage reduction against (PvE) aoe attacks.

As for the Great Sword, a change was made recently and to it was a step in the right direction. It may need a few more tweaks, but it’s getting there.

As for the Tornado, I just don’t like form changing skills that last short enough that I need to use them twice just to read the skill descriptions.

Speeding up the projectiles a bit on the staff’s auto attacks would be a good start to be honest.

There’s a 4th category though. Those that honestly care about the game and would like to see it floursih for years to come. They want to give some feedback and are desperate for being heard. But they feel ignored, so their response is repeated…louder each time, until finally they snap.

I’m all in the category 4, except for the snap part. But I’ll admit, Chris White stating the community ‘loves the new changes’ is a big slap in the face.

Scrolled down a few pages to the huge ‘Ascended Gear’ thread but couldn’t find it. So I’ll add my reply in this new thread.

Chris White

We’re very excited about the new content, and from the reactions we have seen, so are many of you.

Thanks for taking our feedback so seriously. No, I mean, really, thank you.

- If this thread becomes another one where people bicker back and forth about Ascended gear, I will close it down. Please continue discussion about Ascended gear in the existing threads on that topic and do not derail every thread that pops up.

If you stopped ignoring people’s concerns about Ascended gear and actually gave some straight answers, people would shut up about it.

Seriously, between those two statements, it helped me to remind why I dislike PR managers so much. But guess what? Ignoring it will not make it go away. Sure, people may quiet down, but on a whole, you’ve taken a hit. And that’s not because of the gear change itself.