Guild Wars 2

If this guy was on my server I’d log in my level 4 alt and follow him around all day. Well, okay, no I wouldn’t, no real desire to hang around jerks, even to mess up their thang.

On the rare occasion I’ve heard something like this from a commander, I add them to my mental list of icons to ignore. Funny saying individual skill doesn’t matter in a zerg too, I think that guy playing the level 15 ranger and stomping full 80s (before the pet buff) would be an asset to any zerg.

Where’s the thread asking for a gear-check feature for commanders? That will be next, no doubt. Since a level 80 in greens or berzerker gear is as squishy (or squishier, says my engineer who at one point had 33k HP as an uplevel….) as an upleveled character, you’ll need that too.

PinCushion.7390:

I disagree that Evasive Arcana is too good. It’s just good. Let’s have a look at our options.

Fire:
Persisting Flames
Pyromancer’s Puissance

- These are “nice.” Not great. Not even good. Nice.

Air:
Tempest Defense ( 90 second cooldown?!? )
Grounded (Hyper situational, cumbersome burst)

Earth:
Rock Solid
Written in Stone
– Again. Nice. One trait that requires we save Earth attunement to counter CC if we see it. Another trait that only works if we’re running a signet build.

Water:
Cleansing Water (Build Neutral. Even with the 5s cooldown it’s still an awesome trait)
Powerful Aura (Aura share builds are very good in a support role)

Arcane:
Evasive Arcana (Not Conditional. Not chained to one build.)
Elemental Surge (Pretty bad.)

So, unless you’re running a signet or aura sharing build, you really don’t have a lot of options for GM traits. The Fire traits are pretty bland, though can be handy at times. The Air traits have either a very long CD or are just a royal pain to actually use. The Earth traits are not terrible. The Water traits are incredible. And the other Arcane GM trait is garbage. So, what else would you take?

I meant “just too good” in relation to other trait lines GM traits. What I actually suggested (I think anyway) would be just as good, and buff other trait lines by offering something useful. I didn’t really mean it is overpowered, more just that it’s power is unbalanced and should be spread around the trait trees while making a trait which better synergizes with reduced attunement cooldown.

SPESHAL.9106:

Right now, a ranger can be virtually afk and still doing things no other profession can do…other times…the opponent can merely exploit terrain to sabotage the primitive AI.

Funny you should say that. Last night I was testing an elementalist build against a standard ranger build, she got up to answer a knock at the door and her autoattacks from pet killed me. Admittedly, that build sorta sucked, and I’m a terrible player, but that wasn’t even “virtually” afk….

I always go commando when I play GW2 (or any other time), it’s why I’m so OP.

Mithfir.1038:

Raif.9507:

Fiery Greatsword – Your only useful elite in WvW (though an argument can be made for the elemental)

Yeah I love the elemental but after the nerf the Fiery Greatsword gives
more flexibility. Which is my preferred play style.

Now just learn to use the greatsword offensively. Not even having to run because your enemies are dead is better than running. (for solo roaming maybe not so much, since soloing is mostly about 1vX and using your best escape tool to attack when you could be overwhelmed by numbers any time is dangerous)

It’s all about positioning, but firey greatsword can punch holes in zergs better than just about any other skill we have available. Just be careful not to die from retaliation.

LordByron.8369:

fiery greatsword is the ONLY mobility tool ele has left.

I don’t agree with the RtL nerf, but I also don’t agree that greatsword is our ONLY mobility option. Hyperbole isn’t going to help our cause.

Now if you can lose precious seconds to cast it yourtarget already fleed away…and did u see it locks you away from 80% of your skills and is horribly bugged?

If either I or my target is fleeing, I’ve probably burned most major weapon skill CDs already and having another set available with low cooldowns and high mobility is ideal in those situations.

Also i can t get how 1 skillset from a SINGLE weapon of another profession….makes ele viable

It’s not from another profession, although skills are similar, and there’s a lot more going on that makes elementalist viable than just greatsword. It helps, augments and supplements our skillsets.

better just take the other profession along with more armor/toughness and weapon swap….

Infact the “other class” is actually quite strong in www atm.

I have a warrior, they’ve always been strong in WvW when built and played right, but it’s never been as fun as my elementalist. Skill lag makes it more viable though, because 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1.

I was using my firey greatsword to burn down a gate once, and in mumble there was a warrior bragging about how much damage their 100 blades was adding to the rams and firey greatswords hitting the gate. I just smiled.

P.S. i short: if you can afford burning an elite + few utilities for a speed burst doesn t make your class viable.

It makes your opponent unexperienced.

Just posted this in another thread, but it bears on this one as well:

I may have just thought of a fix for the unkillable bunker that wouldn’t break burst (a bit late, but oh well).

Replace the evasive arcana trait with a trait giving a 10-20% cooldown reduction on ALL weapon skills, then replace all the -20% cooldown traits with a trait giving the current evasive arcana effect of that element on dodge (and buff every roll but water slightly to make the trait worth taking). Maybe make the water roll effect a grandmaster so it’s not possible to take both that and cleansing water.

Currently evasive arcana is just too good, and I’m not sure another nerf to it’s functionality would help unless it was so drastic as to make the trait useless. I think my idea to replace it entirely and offer the current effects as separate traits would be more balanced than further nerfs. Having a GM trait in arcane reduce weapon skill cooldowns just makes sense as well, arcane is the spell-slinger-spammalot line but if you go full into that line your weapon skills won’t be ready most of the time so you’ll just be switching for the traited buffs and to proc weapon sigils.

Also if that got implemented it would be nice if the traited fire dodge blast was reverted to act as a blast finisher and have a decent bit of damage added. The traited air dodge should have the radius of the blind effect increased and/or add weakness/vulnerability. The water dodge is fine as is, if anything it could use a 3-5 sec CD before it becomes available after swapping into water (water swap>ea roll is currently the burst heal which is most annoying to fight against, if there was a small space between the heals it wouldn’t be so dramatic but would still be viable). Earth roll would benefit from a slight damage boost or more bleed under this system.

Probably sounds like blasphemy, but I’m currently running 0-25-30-15-0. Full Knight’s armor and trinkets slotted with beryls and Valkyrie weapons (S/D, S/F and staff).

Been so long since I had 30 in arcane I’ve lost the feeling for the timing. I went into sPvP last night to mess around and do some dueling now that the custom servers are sort of open. With the low cap on crit-damage in there I couldn’t really get my burst build to work so I went back to a modified bunker (0-15-0-25-30 with Valk amulet and Zerker jewel). I kept getting frustrated because I’d swap into an attunement and everything would still be on cooldown, other than evasive arcana heal it actually felt like gimping my playstyle having such a fast attunement recharge (I know this is just an illusion and I felt the opposite when I first started dropping points in arcane for more damage).

Hm, may have just thought of a fix for the unkillable bunker that wouldn’t break burst (a bit late, but oh well). Replace the evasive arcana trait with a trait giving a 10-20% cooldown reduction on ALL weapon skills, then replace all the -20% cooldown traits with a trait giving the current evasive arcana effect of that element on dodge (and buff every roll but water slightly to make the trait worth taking). Maybe make the water roll effect a grandmaster so it’s not possible to take both that and cleansing water.

I usually take Energy instead of Battle, but I run a more offensive trait set than the normal bunker, and dodges are golden.

With a standard bunker build, sigil of fire would proc about every 6th-7th hit after each cooldown. In a 1v1 I wouldn’t think that would be as reliable damage as Battle, but in bigger groups, aoe would make Fire proc more reliably (in 1v1, scepter autos and dagger fire #1 would be your best bets to proc Fire).

I’ve been trying out sigil of doom in pvp and liking it. Having access to poison is really helpful, -33% healing can better than straight up damage in many cases. Used to not work for us but I guess they fixed that bug.

I tend to forget I even have this skill available when fighting any competent opponent. Maybe use it to force them to burn a dodge, but then, most will realize you don’t even need to do that, just keep circle strafing.

I barely play sPvP. It feels like going to the city swimming pool when the beach is a few blocks down the street (the town I grew up in had this feature, lol), small, safe, sterile…. Been hanging around the spectator mode a bit the last couple days, and I can see how the 0-10-0-30-30 cantrip build can be considered OP. There just isn’t enough crit damage available in there with the amulets to make a burst ele capable of killing a bunker (anything) unless they facetank everything, which makes fire grab all the crappier. I tried to approximate my WvW build in there, which can hit CEs of over 10k (on geared 80s, you naysayers), and the biggest crit I saw was not even quite 6k. Balancing around this game mode seems odd to me (looking at the numbers in the PvP browser it looks like there are about as many total sPvP players as there are WvW players in one single EB map, and the PvP browser is across all servers, right?) when it seems to have by far the smallest population of any game mode.

Not sure what I’m ranting about any more….. oh yeah FIRE GRAB! FIX PLEASE! Make it, like, hit sometimes, or so some damage, or at least shoot friggin rainbows or something so I can spam it in LA all day since there’s no other use for my “jack-of-all-trades-but-sucks-at-every-single-one-of-them” class.

Senticon.3452:

And I really can’t find use for Zephyr’s
Boon since I have only one skill that gives me aura, and I don’t use it so often.

Staff has 2 auras, one is hidden in a combo though.

Blast finishing Frozen ground (water #4) gives aoe frost aura, which will carry any of your “aura” trait effects to every target. That’s you and 4 allies buffed with fury (20% more crit), swiftness, -10% damage taken and chilling any enemies who attack. Slotting Arcane Wave instead of Signet of Fire might actually net you more total damage with Zephyr’s Boon, as that would give you 2 blast finishers for more frost aura uptime and 20% crit to 5 people (plus the skill damage itself and the ability to blast finish other fields for might/healing/etc) is probably better than ~9% crit for just yourself (assuming you are using SoF for it’s passive crit increase rather than the burn active).

Lightning hammer won’t get near it’s damage potential unless you re-stat and at least partially re-gear. It’s damage comes from maximizing crit-damage and % damage add traits. Boon duration runes and 30 arcane takes several hundred off your power and a good chunk from precision and crit damage.

If you want to get a feel for it just re-trait to something like the lightning hammer dps build floating around this forum, keeping your same armors and weapons. It won’t be quite as hard hitting, but still benefits from the aoe blind and blast spam.

I like staff and scepter better for most PvE than D/D. Staff works good with auramancer build, better than D/D even since the shocking aura nerfs/fixes. Scepter/X only has one aura, so really kinda a waste of traits for those weapon sets, when using a scepter, just swap aura traits to something that adds damage or other useful majors.

Senticon.3452:

Thank you for the tips, I thought maybe 5% > healing is good buff for water magic
as I mostly switch attunements fast in combat, but I didn’t really had time to test
it properly.
If I remove 10 points from fire, I’m afraid I will lose in power > dmg,
and that is critical for me, and it’s really good call to change to 5% burning,
somehow didn’t thought about it.
What about Iscription (grants attunement boon when cast a glyph) in Air Magic?
I have 2 glyphs I cast pretty often with low cd.

Even with maximum precision, the 5%>healing trait will only give you slightly over 100 extra healing power. Not worth blowing a major trait on IMO. Inscription would be a decent choice, especially if you keep renewing stamina instead of changing that to the boon-on-swap trait.

The 10 points in fire gives you +100 power. That’s about 5% of your potential total power, equal to slightly less than 3 stacks of might, and the same as 10 stacks of bloodlust. It’s definitely not a huge amount. Almost any trait in water and many in earth would be more useful than anything in fire, it’s just a lackluster trait line unfortunately. It’s easy to cover loss of power through gear, my general rule is ‘trait for effects, gear for stats’. If you do keep it, the 5% to burning foes is better unless you stay in fire more than 50% of the time, stuff will always be burning, that makes all your skills hit harder (and allows you to do stuff like take the piercing shards trait in water, cast a meteor shower and swap to water immediately for 25% more damage for the rest of the duration….).

This thread is funny. I was going to post something compassionate and helpful after reading the OP, but then I continued reading. Now I’m just going to continue drinking my coffee and shake my head in mild disbelief.

To the duellists: Remember to be polite at first if someone runs in all rambo-style trying to “save” their teammate. If they won’t respond in kind, and continue to be disruptive, kill them till they leave (there’s nothing in the ToS about your server-mates being required to defend you if you’re being a jerk). Might consider leaving the south camp alone too, when you leave the duelling area to engage in WvW objective capture it makes your presence on the map less tolerable to other servers.

When I was a kid, there was a park a block from my house which was mostly just an empty field, which the neighborhood kids would use to play various sport like games. Some of the crusty old folks would stop by from time to time to shake their canes at us and suggest in threatening tones that we should move our games to the park a mile away with the officially marked out fields for baseball/football/etc (which were often full of organized teams which we had no desire to participate in). Despite their rants, the field was not destroyed by our actions, nor did the authorities ever arrive to compel us to move to a more sanctioned space.

Perhaps it’s that I am now the crusty old person, but looking back in time, these situations strike me as similar.

Phillipidies.3204:

Red=Dead, I don’t care if you duel , GvG, or wander around naked getting POI’s, I’m gonna try and kill you. Seriously do whatever floats your boat, but don’t cry on the forums if someone comes in and “ruins your duel or fight club”. Its a PvP zone, the only rules I follow are :kill my enemies, try not to rub it in if I kill you.

Maybe it’s the excessive caffeine in my coffee (this stuff is primo, bro!!!!) but this gave me a vision of an old man with a cane running at a group of kids going “red is dead biiiiitches!!!!”.

( I get this point of view, I do. It’s part of what makes duelling in an open PvP zone fun, honestly. The last MMO I played, we had training/screwing-around PvP days in our guild where we’d go somewhere random and all kill each other. If/when the other guilds found us it was pretty fun, or even if some assassin decided to stealth rambo and we got the fun little mini-game of hunting the little punk. )

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

no
you should get the air trait that gives boons when you use glyphs not 5% pre->healing unless you’re going healing build with no glyphs.

Ah yeah, overlooked that one. That trait is terrible. Even with a ton of precision that’s like 100 healing power max, maybe….

For 30 air I usually take zephyr’s boon for dagger or staff, zephyr’s focus for scepter, and both bolt to the heart and areomancer’s alacrity no matter the weapon set.

Not sure if there are any leveling guides out there, maybe someone more organized and less rambly than me could make one.

Most of the builds assume you are 80 in full exotic gear (which you will be fairly fast, leveling and gearing up in GW2 doesn’t take long compared to many MMOs). Pretty much aim to approximate the stats of the level 80 builds in proportion, and build more defensively at first if you get downed often.

Any PvP build will work in PvE, to some extent. Players can hit as hard as PvE bosses in many cases, and are generally less predictable (once you learn their patterns you can pretty much get away without any defensive stats to speak of, human players don’t always stand in the same place using the same abilities, well, some don’t).

Not sure your level, or how much of this is redundant, but here:

I usually recommend putting the first 9 trait points you get into the water line, then when you get the tenth one go to the trainer and reset your traits (a silver or so at most, don’t buy another manual!) and put 10 in arcane and take the elemental attunement trait. That way you’ll have some hitpoints for your first few levels while you learn to dodge and time self-heals, vitality scales well at low levels, giving a flat 100 HP for each trait point which is a ton at that level. The 10 point trait in arcane gives a boon each time you switch attunements, earth and water really help with protection (-33% damage taken) and regeneration (heath recovery over time) and can be better active defense than the passive HP boost from water. The other option is leave the first 10 points in water, take any of the good traits there and put your next 10 into arcane (still would recommend dropping those points into earth for the toughness, then resetting them into arcane after you have a full 10 more at level 31(?) as you don’t really get any benefit from arcane points without the full 10 there for the major trait). Bottom line: resetting traits is cheap, play around with it till you can stay alive.

As for leveling, there’s some things that apply to the first character of any class to some extent.

-Gather all the nodes you see and craft with the materials. Pick 2 crafts and level them to max as you level, two maxed crafts gives 20 character levels of exp on top of what you get gathering (daily and straight exp per action). Sell what materials you don’t need to buy ones that you do. Craft on Thursday nights or Friday mornings to get the highest bonus exp chances, using the crafting boosters from the black lion chests is cool if you get them free, but not really worth buying keys for.

-When entering WvW before level 80, you will be upleveled to 80 with stats based around your current build. Vitality, toughness and condition damage stats are the best with this scaling. Try to have gear as close to your level as possible using those stats, and put trait points into the lines which give them as well. Because of the scaling math, a level 20 elementalist with all trait points in water and all at-level vitality gears will have several thousand more hitpoints than is even possible at level 80 in full exotic gear. Surviving in groups in WvW isn’t hard at all at low levels, just don’t build to do massive damage, because you won’t, the weapon damage scaling doesn’t work the same way (the same level 20 with 10 in air and all precision gear would have a huge amount of critical damage, but still very low base attack, due to weapon scaling so high multipliers of low numbers = still low damage).

-Learn to use all the weapon options available. They all (attempt to) have specific situational uses.

-Explore. Do every dynamic event you come across if possible and hang around after, watch the npcs, follow them if they go on talking, often events will chain into multiple events (not every event chains, but many do, and often you will complete the hearts in the area doing this also). Map completion rewards can be pretty lackluster until the 60+ zones, but the exp gained from unlocking all the areas and hearts adds up to quite a bit. Gather as you explore.

-Don’t bother with rare (yellow) quality gear as you level. Masterwork (green) is plenty for everything and the difference in stats isn’t much, while the difference in cost adds up to several gold over the course of your leveling. You will outlevel it fast anyway. Salvage white quality gear with basic salvage kits. Sell unwanted blue/green drops to npcs (or TP if green/yellow and the selling price is higher than the npc cost + TP fee).

Rambling enough for you?

Chaosky.5276:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Technically, yes, okay, there was that. Explaining the functions of a mechanic.

If you quote only one sentence from a post it’s easy to take it out of context. The sentence before that indicated my doubt that a developer would comment on this topic, which is asking for reasoning behind a change, not simply a mechanical definition of a skill function.

Perhaps that sentence was slight hyperbole, but one very simple comment in a week defining a technical change is hardly regular interaction. I respect the hard work the developers do and realize they can’t come to the forums all the time, but it seems like they are severely limited in what they are allowed to even discuss with the public.

You’re taking my post entirely too seriously.

Haha, sorry about that. So much for my nonsense detector, need to re-calibrate that blasted thing.

It’s a perfect time to learn a new weapon set. D/D is less than ideal against ranged mobs.

Also, upgrade your gear. Don’t bother with rares, the cost difference is better saved for endgame gear unless you are rich. Just upgrading to at level masterwork quality gear looks like it would give you about a 15%ish increase in base defense. Get some defensive stats on your trinkets if you can, that’s a good place to stack some extra vit and toughness.

You didn’t mention your traits. If you aren’t already, run at least 15 in water for the self-heal on water swap, and 10 in arcane for the boon on attunement trait (protection and regeneration being keys to survival).

Don’t bother with condition damage gear, it comes at the cost of direct damage or survival stats and doesn’t synergize well with elementalists (it can work, but it’s not good against ranged groups of mobs, which you will encounter a lot from now on). That could be much of the problem, the level 47 rare set is condition/precision, which has terrible synergy for elementalists, takes a long time to kill as your damage is largely back-end and your crits may be more frequent but with no power it’s basically like multiplying nothing.

Learn cooking or buy some cheap foods to buff your vit/toughness or give you regeneration.

D/D is a good roaming set in WvW, and that’s where the common build really shines and the source of much of it’s popularity. In PvE, other sets are better or almost required for some things, the developers intended every class to use different weapons for different things.

(Not really glass but it’s more what you asked about, glass is 30-30-0-0-10 with full berzerker everything)

Knight’s armor, stick beryl orbs in it.

If you can afford a few extra gold, do the same with Knight’s trinkets, put exquisite beryl orbs in them, otherwise just go with valkyries trinkets.

Valkyrie’s weapons, sigil of battle or energy. If using 2 handed weapons sigil of force or accuracy, if you can afford extras for stacking, perception or bloodlust.

I’d suggest trading the 10 points in fire into water or earth for more useful defensive traits, but if you leave it, change the trait to the +5% damage to burning foes as it will help your damage in every attunement.

Condition damage builds don’t work well for elementalists generally. Lot’s of reasons but basically the attunement swapping mechanic prevents effective condition application unless you can find something that will stand in eruption for a long time, and then you’re locked out of heals and direct damage and support…..

Chaosky.5276:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Our forum hasn’t seen a developer in so long I can’t even remember.

Yikes, you might wanna get your memory checked out, because we had a dev comment on the Cleansing Water change within the last week.

A very, very mundane topic, but they posted.

Technically, yes, okay, there was that. Explaining the functions of a mechanic.

If you quote only one sentence from a post it’s easy to take it out of context. The sentence before that indicated my doubt that a developer would comment on this topic, which is asking for reasoning behind a change, not simply a mechanical definition of a skill function.

Perhaps that sentence was slight hyperbole, but one very simple comment in a week defining a technical change is hardly regular interaction. I respect the hard work the developers do and realize they can’t come to the forums all the time, but it seems like they are severely limited in what they are allowed to even discuss with the public.

Water fields already were nerfed, in a sideways fashion. Blast finish heals had an unlimited target cap like warrior shouts and a few others a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, back then elementalists could blast finish every dodge with no cooldown in every attunement. Talk about spike healing…..

But, no, don’t nerf them further. Spike aoe dps and CC is their counter, or siege. Play and counterplay should be encouraged, not just dps racing.

Elixer S formerly functioned like mist form, you could heal while using it. It locked toolbelt skills, but it also has a lower base cooldown and can be traited for even shorter cooldown as well as traited to cure condition. All in all, very similar to a cantrip. Using toolbelt skills isn’t really comparable to attunement swapping, in case anyone was going to make that argument.

I’d be willing to bet that this thread won’t get an official answer. Our forum hasn’t seen a developer in so long I can’t even remember.

Navzar.2938:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Hey, I’m all for scepter buffs, but maybe try to be less confusing/rambling and ANet might take it somewhat seriously.

Reduce dragon tooth’s damage and burn duration by 33%, and make the spell start dropping the moment casting ends. It still has a pretty flashy warning sign during casting though and a total of ~1.5sec before impact, so it should be fair.

I’d be down with that. Or double the current damage and keep the hang time as is, that might reward skilled play better.

With 3k power and 70% crit damage I only see about 5k max hits on geared 80s, and while that is definitely significant damage my thief can hit as hard with cluster bomb every 3 seconds and it’s a LOT harder to see coming.

If you stand under a giant lava spike for 3 seconds (or more commonly just run under it AFTER it’s cast because, really, it doesn’t usually hurt bad anyway) then you should take enough damage to teach you to stop behaving so foolishly.

katniss.6735:

I’ve never used a single piece of clerics.

This.

I use it on my warrior though, go figure.

Not sure what this thread is about, the title asks a question then the OP goes on to give a generic anti-tank/pro-dps rant with some suggestions for our less popular weapons thrown in. The title suggests a desire to know why people use cleric’s gear but the OP doesn’t really even talk about that much.

The trinity of tank/healer/dps is dead.

Long live the trinity of boon-applier/boon-stripper/loot-bag.
(or, as I like to call them: Booner/Stripper/Bagger)

Booner vs. Booner can last forever, or until a Stripper or 10 friends arrive, or until one breaks his fingers. It’s like watching Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. hitting each other with wet dishrags, funny for a few minutes, but not really quality entertainment.

Stripper vs. Stripper is not only hot, but can go either way. Get it? Nudge nudge wink wink. Shiny purple glitter and dark black clouds everywhere.

Bag vs. Bag is the most varied, but mostly comes down to how much of a Booner or Stripper the players have managed to build their Bags into.

Zerg vs. Zerg is about who has the most and most coordinated Booners and Strippers, and whose Baggers can provide some small utility and avoid dying to rally the enemy.

Also, the counter to everything is arrow carts.

Feel free to sticky this post as the new guide to WvWvW. Consider it a public service.

On(ish) topic: Retalitaion is unbalanced. Not simply OP or UP. UNBALANCED. In some instances it is basically worthless and in some it provides much more damage than it should for the amount of skill involved. Changing it to a 10% return on damage or putting it on an ICD would balance it for different scenarios but nerf it too much in others. Not sure if there is an easy solution for this. Comes from designing the game based on 5v5 tPvP and PvE, and we have to deal with the imbalance from that, those modes would be unbalanced by some changes which would benefit large scale combat, and our favorite game mode is 3rd of 3 on their priority list.

stof.9341:

Slomo.1029:

Hazor.3140:

Sure, because mist form stomping isnt way stronger than stealth stomping lol

Yea. Burning a 90s cd utility skill is totally comparable to 60% of the fight stealth….

Stealth stomp protects you against the guy you stomp. Mist form protects you against him and all his friends that know what they do.

Seriously, just wave your sword above your downed friend a couple times and get ready to stomp the thief back after he reappears.

Works only if you are playing a sword swinging class, the thief is total glass (and probably you, if a couple sword swings down him), he doesn’t blind you or use haste or both. So basically if he’s trying to rambo-stomp someone inside a zerg without the skills and build to pull it off. An elementalist built glassy pulling that move would melt before he got close enough to stomp anyway, and a tanky stealth specced thief ain’t going down to a few random aoes and sword swings.

The elementalist might get that stomp off, but if he was the one who downed the enemy, it was upleveled or squishy as heck and anything could have done the same job.

One guaranteed stomp every 60 seconds (traited) is far less useful than a very likely stomp possibility every 4-5 seconds. Really not sure how people can even compare the two.

maddoctor.2738:

Hazor.3140:

Edit: I was wrong, you can actually do a full stomp from stealth if you have the “Meld with shadows trait”, the part about not being invulnerable and no source of stability still stands, since the only downed skills that wont really stop the thief from stomping are the warrior and engineer #2

Add Ranger and Necro to the list.

Mesmers Eles and Thieves can escape from an Mist stomping Ele too, so the only difference is with a Guardian.

And blinding a downed guardian stops their #2 from working, and I have blind-on-stealth traited on my thief. Even without that trait, thieves have an abundance of blind options.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|b.1p.h2.8.1p.h1h|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7|1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.1c.67|0.u69a.0.u34b.a5|39.7|1l.1s.1u.1v.0|e

This is the build I usually run (experimenting with others at the moment, but this is my old favorite all-arounder) and it still works fine after the nerf, just less mobility and I use cleansing fire instead of mist form in WvW now. It’s good with any weapon set, just swap the major traits where necessary, the only thing it misses is blasting staff, if you need that for some reason just drop 10 points from air back into arcane.

All the jewelry is crafted, the gems have been replaced as well, so you won’t find those exact stats for sale, gotta get the exquisite gems and replace them manually. You can craft the armor as well, or buy it for badges + gold in WvW (around 150ish badges and 1 gold per piece). The back piece comes from the temple of Grenth in cursed shore, that npc also sells jewelry with power/toughness/vitality (soldier’s) stats which work well for a tankier build.

The weapons are crafted. There is currently no in game source for those stats besides crafting (or buying crafted off the TP). Other stat sets are fine too, the main things are to make sure they are exotic quality and don’t bother with anything with condition damage (this build is about crit/crit-damage).

As for order of upgrading (assuming you don’t have the funds to go full exotic the minute you hit 80). Get exotic (gold/orange/whatevercolorthatis) weapons and trinkets as soon as possible.

Your base damage is directly related to weapon quality, and trinkets give slightly more total stats than armor (as well as rares being proportionately more expensive, 1 gold or more as opposed to 20ish silver for amors and exotics of both are about the same cost). Rare quality (yellow) armors or even masterwork (green) are decent for general PvE, you can survive with them while you farm for better stuff.

Last thing should be minor adjustments like runes/sigils and the gems in your trinkets. Using “major” instead of superior sigils at first can save a good bit of gold, and get almost the same effect.

That build I linked uses food buffs too, don’t expect quite those stats without them. The lower level foods are pretty cheap and give a decent buff if you can afford them, but it’s not hard to go foodless too.

loseridoit.2756:

Currently, some people are not affected by the change because they are using RTL as it was intended. A gap closure

loseridoit.2756:

I said something about hit mechanics. The same mechanics apply to stealth which Anet should change. I already noted that it is buggy.

those those effects will not trigger an hit. Hit means doing damage in this game

Block, miss or many others do not trigger an hit which makes stealth strong but RTL weak

I was responding to the quote that I re-quoted. You said my useage of RtL wasn’t affected by this patch. It was. My burst and gap closer ability has been reduced.

I know what “on hit” means in this game, thanks. Giving this skill a doubled cooldown on hit is in no way balanced. Heartseeker doesn’t cost double the initiative when used for mobility or if it misses for any reason. Heck, my warrior can use eviscerate to break immobilize and gain a fire aura if I find a fire field (easy), and if I miss something, I get to KEEP my adrenaline AND the skill gets a REDUCED cooldown.

No other gap closer in the game gets a cooldown increase if it misses, or a cooldown decrease if it hits (if you’d prefer to view it that way).

If you want to play “X class can do Y, so A class should be able to do B” we can do that all day, but I’ll take the bunker elementalist route and just run away from that argument. Which is cool, cause I guess that means I won. Winning illogical arguments by avoidance ftw!

(edit: forum mangled my quoting….)

I wonder why so many comments in this forum are from non-elementalist players.

As a player with over 1500 hours on elementalist and hundreds more across several other classes, I see those posts as “hi, I know next to nothing about one of the most complex classes in the game, however, I’d like to see it have all abilities I do not understand removed so that I can easily kill them without having to learn anything”.

I don’t rant on the necro or mesmer forums (the only 2 classes I don’t know anything about other than that when well played they are tough opponents).

There’s also a good measure of confusion about what winning means. Apparently to some people, winning means being unkillable. In tPvP that is true, and guardians do it a lot easier, if not better as well.

In WvW there is NO point to running away constantly other than to troll newbies. When I see an enemy D/D elementalist with a bunker setup trolling a group of my allies, I usually silently thank them for keeping those people away from the real action, where they would likely be free rallies to the enemy zerg….

Do they plan to make all mobility skills have double cooldowns if they miss? If not, why just RtL? One tPvP map?

loseridoit.2756:

Currently, some people are not affected by the change because they are using RTL as it was intended. A gap closure

I mostly used it as a gap closer and burst damage before the change. D/D bunker mobility was the target but they hit my S/D burst build square in the junk.

Between aegis, invulnerability, blind, stealth, dodges, animation glitches, server lag, and melee cleaving my rabbits right before RtL gets me to them, it goes on the long cooldown more often than not. I don’t generally use it to escape, either, since a well timed immobilize (or one of a dozen being spammed from a zerg) turns it into a deathtrap.

ResJudicator.7916:

All in all, I think the mistform change encourages more skillful play.

Besides, you can still swap to water + EA roll to clear some conditions and get a moderate amount of healing.

Yeah, that “skill” of knowing when an invisible opponent is about to hit you 3 times in 2 seconds, or the “skill” of mind-controlling that opponent into blowing all his burst during your 3 seconds of invuln, not simply waiting it out and blowing you up, or maybe the “skill” of only getting attacked by unskilled opponents……

But hey, there’s still that 30 point trait (which is “required” for EVERY elementalist build anyway, right?) which is your every 10 second auto-win button (if by “win” you mean hit like a limp noodle then run away without downing anyone but uplevels).

Personally, I liked playing my low/no arcane builds and occasionally actually winning a fight. It’s cool though, I managed to rank my elementalist up enough before the patch to get the first couple levels of arrow cart mastery. It’s pretty cool playing an actual ranged aoe class now. I just carry a staff around in case my arrow cart gets destroyed or I can’t find one to man. Also, I ride the lightning at rabbits a lot now…..

Seems like engineers and necros will be next on the condition spammer nerflist. They are the only 2 classes left that actually benefit from a condition damage build as opposed to direct damage or bunker.

Sorry for your misfortune, mesmers. There’s room for you over here on the “one viable build” bench with us elementalists. Might I suggest a set of soldier’s armors?

(there’s a thread somewhere with some math on it showing that confusion still scales better with condition damage builds than other conditions as long as you can get up more than 4 stacks, so maybe don’t throw out that condition build just yet, or is it that power-shatter still does more damage? because maybe that needs nerfing too, after all, you aren’t warriors or thieves, what business do you have doing damage?!)

Nokaru.7831:

The bug is from standing on the edge of a wall. It thinks you’re falling.

Not just the edge of the wall. In this shot it likely happened due to server lag, as I had just jumped up to that spot and clicked the interact immediately (and we were having that cool “hey, I can only use autoattack” lag feature thingy).

This change takes waypoint rushing to a whole new level as well, especially in bay and garrison where the portal is really close to the capture circle. A full 30 second window to respawn is just, well, messy, really messy….

maddoctor.2738:

Thrashbarg.9820:

RtL now also goes on the 40 sec cooldown if you are blocked or miss due to blind, your enemy dodging, or if they simply move slightly beyond the range. It is a terrible gap closer now, since using it as an opening attack (aegis, dodge, etc.) will very likely put it on a longer cooldown.

I didn’t test it but wasn’t it supposed to go on the lower cooldown if it is blocked?

If it was, it’s not working properly. From my testing tonight, it goes on the long cooldown when missing due to any of the reasons I listed in the quoted post.

Dingle.2743:

RTL was intended as a gap closer. ANet are trying to force that. If you want a skill for running away, there’s still FGS (Fiery Whirl, Rush) and Conjure Flame Axe (Burning Retreat, Flame Leap), Fire 3 (Burning Speed) Mist Form, Lightning Flash and RTL on a nerfed cooldown. That’s still far more running-away capability than most professions can have access to at one time.

No, it isn’t, but props for coming up for a use for conjured flame….

And if you’re not using RTL as a running-away skill, you’re not going to be affected by the change – the cooldown is still 20 seconds as long as you hit someone.

Again, no.

RtL now also goes on the 40 sec cooldown if you are blocked or miss due to blind, your enemy dodging, or if they simply move slightly beyond the range. It is a terrible gap closer now, since using it as an opening attack (aegis, dodge, etc.) will very likely put it on a longer cooldown.

It also hampers it’s use as a travelling skill, S/D builds will now have a hard time keeping up with groups.

Basically it’s a shortsighted change based on a reaction to complaints from people who don’t like “squishy” classes to survive their button mashing by mashing their own buttons, and will do little if anything to discourage bunker builds and more to discourage a general avoidance of the elementalist class.

Comet nerf, ouch. Now focus has no reliable heal in water (it’s not too hard to find a water field in WvW, but one with an enemy standing in it to target, which is safe enough to stand in yourself, yeah….).

It’s a terrible damage skill compared to phoenix or dragon’s tooth, the daze effect is nice but such a short duration and such a small aoe radius compared to hammer warrior’s f1 and muuuuch longer cooldown, without the reliable blast finisher it’s just a half kitten mess of a skill.

Mist form change I don’t agree with, but knew it was coming. I was hoping to make a working build around focus, but apparently that would be OP as well.

Mumu.6203:

Thank god, we’ll get rid of all those D/D ele FOTMers

But I really hope they give you better alternatives on other weapons and more viable builds, being pigeonholed as a one build class really sucks.

It’s not just the FotM D/Ds getting hit. Actually the 0-10-0-30-30 build will still be the most “powerful” spec because of it’s healing and damage mitigation, this change will hit balanced/hybrid specs harder. RtL mobility and healing in mist form weren’t what makes that spec “op”, but they were making other specs somewhat viable.

I never understood how running from a fight can be considered winning, or how a spec which mostly excels at running FROM fights can be called “op”, but then again, I never really got into playing my thief…..

It’s not a useless trait tree. It’s too late here for me to go into the math and all, but it’s just not useless at all. Had to say that.

The 3% burst damage add is just a leftover from beta when it was +30% burst damage at maximum. They nerfed it and didn’t have anything better to put there so just left an insignificant damage modifier. That line also gives 30% crit damage at max, which, considered in relation with the potential 24% from boon hate, is getting pretty freekin close to the 30% burst damage add they originally felt the need to nerf to 3% because the synergy with crit damage was too strong.

Should make for some interesting play though. Dropping every trait that gives me boons on my elementalist and switching to S/F so I can reflect and block some of those kill shots, and re-traiting my warrior to a fun little build I just thought up…..

Asurmir.7956:

I was thinking about the core of the elemental build problem. It really does come down to the arcane trait line and its relationship to attunement recharge rate.

I was inspired by the warrior trait line Discipline which offered 1% bonus damage per 10 points.

So, what if our attunement recharge was a base 12 1/2 seconds, and the arcane trait line offered a flat 1 second cool down per 10 points.

I think that alone would open up more build possibilities.

In beta that warrior trait gave a 1% burst damage increase per trait point (30% at max). It was nerfed quite heavily.

Would be nice if they followed suit on the elementalist (but split the difference, as you suggest, base 12 sec and 1 sec reduction per 10 trait points).

Since I mostly play WvW and open world PvE, I use a different calculator. Going to be trying something like this build after the patch:

S/F “boonless” hybrid.

Sigil of hydromancy for added kiting ability, -condition duration runes/traits/food to stay mobile (for a build with no swiftness anyway). Greatsword elite and traited lightning flash for escapes, but not going to be able to outrun a zerg across a map.

Maybe not a great soloing build, but a couple trait and weapon swaps out of combat would make it work for getting from spawn to the zerg easily enough.

Volrath.1473:

Azunai.1065:

Thief is going to get buffed
new skill that “steals” boons for 1 initative

that is half true, the skill does cost 1 initiative but is the second ability of a chain, the first ability costs 3 initiative and since it is a chain you cant skip directly to the boon stealing ability, so its cost is 4 initiative.

If a thief spamms it, he will be able to steal 3 boons since the initiative pool is 12 (not traited)

Thieves already have a skill that costs 4 initiative and hits twice, removing a boon.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flanking_Strike_

Are they just buffing that skill to steal the boon instead of just removing it, or adding another skill entirely?

Dingle.2743:

That leaves nerfing the mobility. It’s the only real option they have to make D/D a worse bunker than S/F.

Remember that most of the healing D/D gets comes from traits, and changing those will also affect every other weapon set; if their aim is D/D = DPS, S/F = Bunker, they can’t touch traits so heavily.

If that’s really their aim, then they should just add a heal somewhere to focus. Make comet drop a water field for 3 seconds and self-blast it at cast or something.

Off-hand dagger is already less than ideal bunker weapon (in any situation other than open field WvW roaming anyway, which I don’t think of as “bunker” so much as, I don’t know, weasel or something like that, a bunker is a fortified underground structure, not some imitation of roadrunner…..).

Bind them to something close to your movement keys. If you have or can get a gaming mouse that really helps, if not, try re-binding your movement keys so you have more keyboard available around your finger reach.

Something like:
E=forward
D=back
S=left strafe
F=right strafe

then you can put attunements on Z,X,C,V
I put dodge and heal on W and R for easy access
other useful keys, pickup, elite, utilities, auto-run, look-back, camera-reverse, etc can all be bound to nearby keys there also

Every attunement has it’s use, that’s where the learning curve is. Since each has a cooldown, and the skills also have their cooldowns, remembering what’s available and when takes practice.

Fire= Direct damage with minor condition damage. Can stack might (power/cond dmg) with fire fields + blast finishers, and add burning damage to projectile attacks. Fire is where the big nukes (mostly) live and you’ll want to use it a lot to burn (hehe) things down fast, but hanging out in fire is rarely the best option since it has basically no survival skills.

Water= Heals and crowd control skills with minor damage, buffs and debuffs. Water fields on staff provide party healing with blast finishers, other weapons don’t have fields but have other healing options and more debuffs/CC.

Air= Direct damage, mobility and crowd control. Synergizes well with a high crit build. Great for initiating or escaping from combat. Blinds, knockdowns, stuns. Most of the dps in air is the auto-attack, and one or 2 other skills depending on weapon.

Earth= Condition damage and crowd control with some big nukes and a few unique skills. This element is the best at everything, um, sometimes. Churning earth is one of the hardest hitting skills in the game, but it’s longish cooldown and long channel time can make it tricky to use. Nearly every skill in earth is like that in a way, super-useful but takes practice to get the desired effect.

stale.9785:

EDIT: question? The common thought is that you can’t hit anyone in PvP with scepter attacks. If more are running this, that can’t be true, eh?

Minion of Vey.4398:

Also, many of the better bunker eles run S/D, not D/D in tpvp. Not because it’s harder to use (it isn’t), because it’s better at being a bunker. It’s just that D/D is repeated so much on the forums, people have accepted that it must be true.

Bunkering in tPvP is about standing in a tiny circle. Scepter is much better at that sort of bunkering than main-hand dagger. Better heal, free +250 toughness, 2 blinds. It’s not so much about landing dragon’s tooth and phoenix, (the damage skills everyone complains about being hard to land) as simply using them to force enemies to move out of the cap circle is effective.

Dagger is better for mobility and sometimes damage, but I prefer scepter in fights when my enemy isn’t going to just run like a wuss or outnumber me 5:1 or more.

Your post is lacking any information which could be used to help.

What level is your elementalist? How long have you been playing (is it your first GW2 character?)? What build and gear are you using? What are you dying to? What are your keybindings (easy to swap attunements?)?

Elementalist was my first character, I died a LOT. I’m sort of a game masochist or something though, I took each death as a challenge and generally went back for more. For a first character just learning the game mechanics (when to dodge, when to heal, when to run, what downed state is about, how to use combo fields and what they do, etc.) try a warrior or guardian, they are a lot more forgiving at first.

stale.9785:

The intended playstyle of D/D ele is to log into the forums and cry that the most OP spec in the game is getting nerfed.

Well, it’s easier than fighting all the fotm necros, mesmers, guardians and engineers running around high tier WvW these days. Since they are basically hard counter to D/D elementalist, and there is no hard counter to forum whining (but do I ever wish there was…..).

PistolWhip.2697:

@blackbeard

I dunno, usually I find warriors to be terrible at escape. I mean, they have high mobility otherwise, when exploring but, their lack of condi removal usually means immob ruins them xD. But I’ll take your word for it, I guess it could swing both ways.

Get a set of soldier runes, run 3 shouts, balanced stance and defy pain trait, remove immobilize on movement skill trait, mending heal and warbanner, soldier’s/cleric’s gears. There’s your super-mobile condition clearing self-healing powerhouse warrior.

What? It’s got no damage traits or gear? Well, neither does the "run-away-forever-troll D/D ele build. The reason most warriors don’t use this setup? Because they have other viable builds, and running away is actually “losing” the fight to anyone not just trying to troll. (Eles have viable damage based builds too, but it seems that a certain segment of players believe “viable” means “immortal” so maybe what’s viable to me isn’t to everyone)

In an attempt to nerf the annoying never-die D/D build they are kicking my hybrid damage S/D&D/D builds in the junk, and I don’t have as much junk protection as a bunker, so um, ouch, bro, my junk!

( I also play warrior, so really, who cares, I can dust him and my thief off and see if they somehow got more fun. Too bad for my baby engineer though, looks like they are getting the junk-kick treatment too, ah well, that’s another set of exotic gear I can avoid buying for a while longer, lol.)

Rising Dusk.2408:

I think this is a good thing because what will matter more in a treb / counter-treb situation is how well your treb user can hit the other, not how big a group they had (and thus how many swirling winds or guardian bubbles they could employ). This rewards good play, and rewards large group size less, and thus is a step in the right direction.

I beg to differ. It will mostly matter how fast you can speed build a counter-treb that is pointed at it’s target, in a place where the siege you are shooting at either can’t hit or isn’t facing already. Now it’s basically just who shoots first (or who has more supply, read: players, to build more trebs), not who shoots better (assuming a base level of competence with treb placement and firing on both sides).

Sure, if one side doesn’t know how to drop siege to face it’s target or the operators aren’t familiar with using a treb in the first place, they will lose on a purely piece for piece basis. Even then, simply having more numbers to build more siege will win. I don’t see this change discouraging huge zergs in any way, nor do I see it as increasing skilled gameplay.

Skilled treb operators vs. skilled blockers was actually an interesting tactical game. Varying treb power and aim, staggering shot timings, trying to catch falling bombs on the edges of cliffs, all these tactics are now dead, and the skill involved will no longer be required. It’s just DPS wars now with siege.

Imagine if player characters had no defensive skills and only one attack, what boring PvP, right? Well, that’s what they just did to siege weapons (assuming catas get the same treatment as trebs here). “Whoever shoots first wins” is a heck of a lot more boring than “rock : paper : scissors”, which is more like what we had (have) “shoot : block : splash damage/aim”.

Shortened: New system will be more “auto-win” for big groups.

Gisei.5749:

Substantial amount of communication? That’s an overstatement if I’ve even seen one. Four or five Eles figuring how what order to go in is nothing to be praised.

This encourages better trebbers and better treb placements. It encourages players to actually look for enemy trebs. No more can a treb just be placed in any old spot as a counter, and let Eles make it invulnerable to counter fire for as long as they choose. No more can players simply hug the treb and not have to worry about how it’ll fare.

This is a good change. Not a bad one in any way. Anything that makes trebuchets less convenient is a boon in my eyes.

It makes trebs MORE convenient. Give me 9 people with supply and now I can speed build a treb anywhere to take out well placed siege inside forts.

What, you planned to use those trebs inside bay to hit any siege placed on the cliffs while you called for reinforcements? Too bad, my treb-boat shall destroy your counter-trebs before they can be turned to fire on that position because the 3 eles you have managed to get inside so far can do nothing to stop it.

It’s not about skill. It’s about who shoots first. That’s all. And I can build a treb basically anywhere that is already facing the way I want.

There is a lot less reason to pre-build siege now though, so no worries about who’s ticking the counter-trebs…..

TheGuy.3568:

Thrashbarg.9820:

BlackBeard.2873:

The end result is that if you want to roam, find another class. You will be found, caught, and killed on your ele. Your only defense will be to waypoint when seen.

Basically this. Honestly though, it’s okay, with the WXP patch zergballin has become the only way to roll anyway. I’ll just be rollin S/F and hanging with the ball, when I play my ele anyway, gonna have to dust off my boring old thief if I want to roam. Wonder what I’ll switch to in 6 months when they realize S/F is “op”. (mist form+heal op? hm, wait till you meet obsidian flesh…..)

Actually /F bunker is pretty insane. I know why most people don’t play it but I have seen some folks go to town with it and condition damage.

Haven’t tried it with condition build, but I may give that a try.

It works great with my hybrid burst build. Mobility obviously makes it less than ideal for soloing, but with a group it’s actually pretty cool. I do fine in 1v1s with it (it’s actually better than D/D against many builds) but it’s hard to disengage from 1vXs where the “X” keeps growing, as is common in WvW.

D/F seems almost like an unintended weapon combo or something. Focus is pretty much a 900 range weapon, 2 ranged disables and 2 projectile avoid skills kind of suggest it does best keeping enemies at range, but to deal damage with daggers it needs melee range.

The best gap closer on mainhand dagger is in earth, but the main damage there is really bad compared to fire or air. Using magnetic leap then swapping to deal damage locks you out of focus’ best defensive abilities for the full cooldown as soon as you get in melee range, dangerous. Okay, that’s far enough off topic…..

On topic:

Too many balance changes all at once. It’s not possible to gather any useful data on how one change will affect balance to an equation when several changes are made at the same time. Any single one of these changes could have brought the “op” bunker elementalist more into balance, but now we’ll never know.

IMO they are all off track, as they nerf more viable builds than just the heal/bunker, the best fix would just have been a reduction to the scaling of healing power as it affects self healing along with the internal CD on cleansing water, which should have always been there and I consider that basically a bug fix.

When cooking, if a dish tastes like it could use a bit of seasoning, add a bit of salt and taste test it. Don’t throw in a bunch of garlic and jalapenos all at once. Cooking can teach much about life in general.

BlackBeard.2873:

The end result is that if you want to roam, find another class. You will be found, caught, and killed on your ele. Your only defense will be to waypoint when seen.

Basically this. Honestly though, it’s okay, with the WXP patch zergballin has become the only way to roll anyway. I’ll just be rollin S/F and hanging with the ball, when I play my ele anyway, gonna have to dust off my boring old thief if I want to roam. Wonder what I’ll switch to in 6 months when they realize S/F is “op”. (mist form+heal op? hm, wait till you meet obsidian flesh…..)