Guild Wars 2

@Above

You are doing something wrong, I farmed Orr including the area before the Arah instance in the first 2 weeks of the game being out. I was in blues and greens, 1 yellow weapon (not even the right stats but it was a dagger so I just used it).
This was using S/D + condition spec (the spec S/D cater the most to). I discovered condition spec works but is too weak, S/D give single target CC but that’s not enough since we are constantly zerged both in Orr and PvP.

Now I switched to D/D, because it seems a stronger combo and indeed it is. It got a smidge more damage but most of all it comes with omni-directional AoE CC.
Now I can kill 5-6 mobs at a time instead of 2 tops, if one of them is a veteran it’s still no problem.

Basically the only one who can give you a greater “amount of defense or evasion” is you, and you can do it. Not in some super easy mode way, no. But enough to kill PvE.
Once you master it, you’ll find out you almost equal some other faster classes at farming, because it’s true you take 3 times as much but you AoE kill instead of quick 1 by 1 / 2 by 2 kill.

No. Not in tournaments. Not at competitive levels, where you have to have 150ms or less.

Sorry, to avoid forum ban I also have to put this absolutely useless line of text to make the post long enough.

Since when I realized Elementalist <> mage but Elementalist =~ druid / monk and have re-geared for it, I can say I am happy with the PvE.

Not the hugest damage at all but i.e. today I have soloed (no elemental) 1 veteran and 5-8 regular adds basically without a sweat. I type 5-8 but it could be more, it was basically a whole plateau plus a veteran “protecting” a vista in a corner.
In instances I am the last man standing.
At Jormag I only die if I do some stupid kitten and generally am the one ressing the others.
In PvP, I have not played enough to have a say, expecially since I mostly do WvWvW and use staff and go with my guild groups.

I’d love story mode was soloable with a party of NPCs, having 4 randoms raging because you are not skipping every cutscene and dialogue “to do it quick so we can farm and grind badges FAST!” quite disrupts the immersion.

As for finding groups, it depends on your server and class. If you play thief or elementalist, finding a group is harder than the other classes. If you play guardian / ranger you are worshipped into any group.

Despite I thought elementalist (my main) would be a mage and it ended up being a pony, I still think it’s well worth the money.

Loxias.2375:

To answer your question, they have no good idea how to fix this debacle (poorly adjusted drop rates and spawn tables), or it wouldn’t be a debacle. Too bad there is no history of MMO’s or prior game in this franchise to take lessons from… oh wait?

There are no MMOs very reliant to a realistic economy (most have simplified stuff like WoW and have massive mudflation and their economy is a farce) that also don’t involve continuous items destruction.

EvE Online has a similar economy but since in that game each death means you lose your stuff (half gets destroyed, half is lootable by other players) it’s much easier to provide for items and money sinks than GW2.
GW2 has to rely on items being salvaged, high TP taxes only, so they have to control how many items enter in the economy very very carefully.

Their true lack of sight came by their lack of vision about bots. Bots are an economy ecosystem killer so they put this DR as emergency measure to stop the game from dying fast and hard.
Like EvE, ANET also need the economy to stay alive for their “PLEX” / gems stuff to keep functioning and giving income, they will prioritize what gives them income over many, many inconveniences imposed on us.

The lava mobs in the last Flame legion region too are insane.

But hey, imagine this: this 2 shotting is all training you need to learn to dodge and survive. You’ll really need it for when you’ll do some PvP and you’ll find out thieves and others are even worse to deal with than that.

Khaldar.7486:

In UO: Farm Ore, farm skills, farm wood, farm Player Kills, etc. (4 years played)
In EQ: Camp Mobs for 12 straight hours, farm drops for gear, farm gear in dungeons, etc. (6 years played)
In WoW: Farm Ore, farm PvP rank, farm Badges, farm gear, farm mounts, etc. (6 years played)

To limit the gameplay of those that may not want to PvP all the time is mind-blowingly myopic.

I found mind-blowing the text in your post that I bolded.

So, you put blatant examples of games that force you to grind and farm like a bot and coherce paying customers into the most repeating and hideous activities of all, and take them as example against the game where you can (slower) still farm but are completely not forced to?

To me it’s like reading a smoker under theraphy, blaming non smokers about how bad their habits are.

Edit: yes GW2 is a theraphy, a threaphy to cure the toxins that bad and cheap design (aka artificially prolonging a subscription based product life time) have instilled in your mindset.

Moakist.5268:

This is just snide. To infer that we’re “playing wrong” or to quote Steve Jobs, that we’re “holding the phone wrong” is unhelpful and disrespectful. These changes, intentional or not, came after nearly a month of the game being launched with no warning and no explanation and WITH continued silence from ANet. It’s pretty bad when you can’t get clarity from the company who championed the idea that this was going to be a “different” non -traditional MMO.

They never hidden their politic of “no farming”, I actually got interested in GW2 by reading info around for long time before it got released and “no farming here” was a common message to read around.

If people just can’t drop their WoW / EQ / Korean grinder blinders and still want to spend their days farming, then they:

1) Are botting.
2) Are as unintelligent as a bot.

1 – is pretty obvious and if this is like EvE Online forums, many times it’s the botters themselves who complain about these restrictions on the forums.

2 – is less obvious. If you don’t want to be detected to be a bot, then don’t dumb play like one. Play between two regions, walk around a bit, just don’t camp the same spot.

It’s not like you have medical prescription to have farmed full legendary sets for all your alts by the end of this month, nor you can blame losing in PvP to inferior gear anyway.

Yes it sucks to be forced into a certain gameplay, but hey, this is a theme park game after all. If you want freedom, EvE and Darkfall are there for you. Istaria if you are a PvE only guy is amazing, I am subbed since 2003.

Two Golden Hints at How to become immune to DR:

1) Stop playing your 1 button mashing, insta-gibbing class.
2) Reroll condition specced Elementalist. Here you go, complete immunity from DR.

To expand, DR leads to less mudflation. Can’t see anything wrong with that.

What I can’t understand is that sometimes there are really no choices than 1 answer and that answer is not allowed.
IE one time a guy asked for a change in a class.
I replied “I agree” and that for the mods is enough to grant an infraction.

So, am I going to get banned because one day I replied “I agree” to one post?

You mention 3 keywords: “PvP”, “achievement”, “explorer”.

1) GW line of games are centered around PvP. You might not like it but that’s what the games are about and ANET never hidden that.

2) “Achievement” is something you achieve (doh!), not a welfare system whereby you are given stuff by rigtheous rights. So, get to work and earn it.

3) Explorer: do you actually believe the years 1800 (often English men) Explorers went to uncharted Africa taking zero risk and low effort? NO! They put their real life on the line and many of them died in atrocious ways.
If you want to have a star next to your name and be revered as Explorer then you have to risk your neck like they did.
It’s actually pretty easy, if I managed to do that, then everyone, in any game and any era can. Just avoid the battle icons and run for your life when you see red names around.

I keep getting PMs saying one message of mine “has been infracted” (usually because I like to humor certain posters on this forum).

But what’s the “infraction” exactly? Is it a counter that leads to ban? Or just a notice the message for ANET was not enough / too much “something” for their taste?

Of course I tried to contact them via mail “for more info” but they never replied so far.

It’s intended, otherwise people would just corner classes like elementalists in the “heal bot” role and de-facto restore the holy trinity.

“Yes but then elementalists would stop being useless” is not the counter-point I want to read, ok?

Also, since ANET “borrowed” several key concepts from EvE Online, what about you also “borrow” their new course against bots? They hired a security specialist and implemented such measures that bots quickly started cry and now EvE is a better place.

On Gunnar’s Hold It’s getting to the point that Frostgorge Sound has more bots than players.
The center map “gauntlet” with the Grawl village (and a Skill point challenge) is permanently devoid of the should-be fast respawning grawls.
two different bot groups are constantly ravaging the whole place.
The most long standing group is composed by multiple, guildless, semi-undressed dual axe asura warriors with very random-chinese-ish names. They are always there.
They were two at the beginning, then one day they disappeared.
The next day they were 4-5 on it again, semi-undressed dual axe asura warriors with very similar names. They compose a sort of “train” that keeps navigating the same waypoints for the whole day.

It’s impossible for the legit players to get any loot or get anything done, the area is just wasted.

Same for the various “ice canyons” east of that area. Despite the are is very dangerous due to the huge amount of ice mobs, there’s so many bots that you have just to tag along with them and you can go completely unharmed. Yesterday there were like 8-9 bots clustered together, flattening everything they came in touch with.

I raid every day. We enter WvWvW and go conquer stuff manned by human AI.

@daphoenix

I just noticed you did not mention which upgrades to put in Clerics Exotic set or I don’t understand what to put. Do I have to put Doylak in there like for PvP?

Hahaha, I am watching the videos, they are nice.
I can already imagine when in WvWvW you server are cornered, 50 vs 10 and you get there. "Hey guys Excala is here. Excala don’t be too unfair against those guys they are just 50, they can’t stand a chance!

Edit: on an unrelated note: if somebody at ANet are watching these videos, forget ever getting our class buffed.

Thank you, you are most kind and helpful!
Of course I am subscribed to your videos.

So, I am really liking a variation of this build, to the point I want to use it in WvWvW and everywhere.

Anyone could please tell me how to “translate” daphoenix gear and jewels into “regular PvE / crafted” items? IE how can I translate the PvP soldier’s amulet in craftable / purchasable items with similar stats?

Dynamite.6584:

If such a feature were to be implemented, it’d be much better if it couldn’t be activated in combat. That would make it easier to switch roles in let’s say dungeons, but would still block the Elementalist from being able to acces 40 skills in combat.

Except that already exists…
Press H. Double click. Bam, swapped out of combat…

Could you please expand on this? I pressed H and double clicked on the weapons and nothing happened.

Also, it takes all of 15 minutes tops to master both weapons, it’s not like you can’t fire before you “ding” five.

Thank you! I suspected you played that, different game, similar style.

Ah, okay then. Thank you for the heads up. In most games like this, I’ve leaned toward the melee, so, a mage-like class is admittedly virgin territory for me. I’ll keep what you said in mind, then.

Part of learning the class is to realize that elementalists are way more similar to WoW feral druids or other MMOs “monks” than mages.
Only time you really play mage is in WvWvW and some PvE, where you can sit on the back and spam with staff. All the rest of the time you’ll have to madly swoop in, apply CC, hit, swoop out, eventually heal and then do it again.

I am trying to learn D/D. I have watched the video again.
Can I repeat what myself said earlier in this thread and say: awesome!

I actually had to slow down the video at some points because you pressed more buttons than I could follow on the screen. I also loved the last audio track, whose music band is it?

The more I play the thing the more it’s exactly like playing old style feral druid in WoW. Chipping at stuff with zillions of shapeshifting, stomping, healing (was tauren mwahaha!) and then back to chipping.

Confirming that our DPS traits are completely, utterly, absurdly useless.

I had fire (including +10% damage and stuff) and now I have zero in fire. The damage is basically the same.
I tried full condition gear plus necromancer in all slots plus full earth and the damage is basically the same of now that I have 20 and zero gear for it.
So I am playing a variation of the OP spec. Compared to my former spec his is about 10% tankier and – on paper – much less DPS. Guess what, giving up the damage stuff and going so much into water did not change my effective damage at all.

Actually I have similar issues with RTL but with the pull-to-target earth spell.

Also, I noticed that if I go “grand piano” mode, the skills begin to lag behind the button presses so much that I see them done the next second.

Well I also noticed that stacking full thoughness plus full earth changed the 7.3k HS thief hits into 6.9k HS thief hits.

kittening to useless = saves 400 damage a hit for me…

Why nobody mentions the focus of this game, that is PvP?

Are you all rank 100 already?
I have levelled up, completed stuff and so on but I am still at the beginning of PvP, before I am good enough for tourneys it’ll take months and months and then they’ll release an expansion.

uncop

You guys are seriously overhyping backstab, it only deals 6-7k on a regularly armored person. Thief bursts are in line with warrior and elementalist damagewise.

My guildmate has 22k health on his thief and hits me for 6.9k. I have full defensive traits, full earth spec, full thoughness and vitality gear including signets etc…

No, don’t tell me the “elementalist is not a normal class, the others don’t get that damage” because even elementalist is a GW2 class for now.

Aelona

Mesmer is a fully defensive class, so we have to be able to cc quite often and punish the attacks.

I saw maybe 2 mesmers heavily loaded with anti range skills and tons of cc / confusion / reflection. They did a hell of a difference, far more than any phantasm noob will do

Fully defensive? Each summon hits me for 3.2k and I am full def traits specced with thoughness (and vitality) in every slot.

I wish I did 3.2k per summon in my offensive build.

Yes, I have a question: could you please expand a bit about your rotation?

Is my feeling that S/D is pointless? I mean, I see you live because you constantly CC even while surrounded. S/D gives less CC but you’ll still be constantly surrounded, there’s just not CDs enough to keep 4-5 people away at range to make range work for you and reduce the incoming damage.

daphoenix.4283:

Hey Vaerah,
another video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB28MHUs18A&feature=youtu.be

Thank you!

Also, the second video is awesome, please keep them coming!

Only thing that sort of “saddens” me is that players like you is what will prevent elementalists from getting any sort of buff.

I put you in the 0.1% of the playerbase, but ArenaNET will just see people like you achieving glorious wins.
Basically Elementalist is Elitementalist, be the 0.1% or GTFO this class as the 0.1% will keep it exactly as is.
If they buff Elementalist, players like you will just solo whole battlefields.

Another factor I have not seen brought on the table: connection latency.

Almost every “pro elementalist” video out there shows some insanely, maniacally good guy playing J. S. Bach harpsicord scores with no single fault, no single delay.

Now, most of the world does not allow for such fast gameplay. Even if I live in a so called “first world country” (a minority), close to the best ISP data center and pay a “double premium gaming connection”, I just can’t get below 150ms latency. Non double premium gaming connections easily go up to 200, sometimes 250ms.
This means that players from many countries, may be competitive in PvP games featuring “Global Cooldown” (usually 1-1.5s) but not in GW2. Not on Elementalist at least.
This is quite an aggravating issue, completely detached from player skill yet heavily affecting them. Some skills require “return feedback” (the server acknowledges the player move and the client waits for its response) effectively doubling those 200ms into 400ms. A Global Cooldown MMO would still keep playability since the GCD is still bigger than 400ms, but not GW2.

Hyena.2037:

It’s a concern because when WoW launched i fell in love with the druid class, and stuck with it despite my better judgement, and it took YEARS (one of the major BC patches) for the class to be ‘tweaked’ enough to be accepted outside a healer role or backup tank. It didn’t matter how much you liked the class or how good you were at it, because if literally ANY other class was avaible you were riding the bench and playing alts because your main just wasn’t good enough. I just really don’t want to subject myself to that again, not that much of a masochist.

Ha!

I was in your same situation. I was one of the “famous, handful feral druids in the whole world accepted and able to main tank Zul Gurub and Naxxramas”.

It took 10 times as much dedication than playing any other class but the rewards were worth it. People would stand absolutely stunned seeing the 1 of max 2 druids on the servers standing in Orgrimmar with raid looted feral gear. Looted in the face of rogues, warriors etc. who would quit the guild when the “guild breaker” Molten Core STR + AGI ring dropped (twice a year) and the druid would be allowed to roll on it.

Was a fun but very rough ride, I just don’t have that mental strength any more (got more priority stuff to think about in RL than a game), so since then I exclusively rolled super precise, totally 1 dimensional classes that would never, never put me again in that situation. Mage was a good choice (was my other main in WoW and many games like Baldur’s Gate, NWN etc) as it’s traditionally the pure DPS non melee class.

But no, in GW2 there’s no mage class, elementalist is a “monk” hybrid class a bit like druids.
The bad thing is, it’s also as compelling to play, so even if every single of my other characters is vastly, absurdly easier (and I am also talking of necro, as my second main, imagine that) I can’t stop playing it.
The good of GW2 is that when I want to switch to god mode I have just to log my ranger and warrior, no real grind needed. Heck, for a while I did not even remember to choose the major traits for the warrior, they are not even needed to melt faces.

Really nice.

Could you please post your build and gear?
Ofc you are D/D, a weapon I really can’t stand.

A question: how do you manage to not die while happily standing in the middle of 4-5 people and casting churning Earth? I tried against my guildies (I have full earth and full thoughness gear) but between the 22k health thief who still crits me for 6.9k, the illusions each critting me for 2.9k and so on, I die in like 1-2 secs if I do that stuff.

Also, if your speed is what’s required to play Ele, I may as well uninstall.

Today I witnessed the “ele is not a thief”. I ran against my own guildies (who are very good). One of them stood in the center of a room and just self healed. I was never able to bring his health (S/D) below 50%.
You could say: “well, sure use CC, interrupts etc.”.
So we went the “full thing”.

Guess how much better I could kill him, with 4 guys constantly, always focusing on me?

Why did they focus on me? 20 or so matches played, only elementalist I have met is… me.

What I met were only guardians, mesmers, thieves and warriors. 1 necro. One.

Aelona

Are you kiddin or are you serious here ? Eles got the most devastating AoEs

The AoEs you can avoid by just stepping out (no dodge needed!)?

Elementalist is the class to use when spamming noobs at walls in WvWvW.
Anyone with 1 braincell and not in such a randoms cluster situation like WvWvW will have no problem avoiding it.

Aelona

Repeat after me : Elementalists are designed for nukin AT RANGE WITH AOES

Also, it sucks to play a game where everyone can really defend and 1v1 on their own except one class that are told how they are “support”.

Some including me actively HATE healing classes and support classes and hybrid classes because it’s proven across the decades that those classes are always borked and weak and in need of a group to spoonfeed them.

ANET for some reason decided that the “mages” had to be such a “support class”. Bleah. Oh, and all of this at the end of BWE so those who enjoyed it in the BWEs for the “glass with some cannon” class got the bone.

You say: “good grief, just roll another”. And what did I roll? You guess it my other main character is a necro. Figures how good it went.

Strongfort.2451:

The fact that something in the average of 8/10 of a tournament’s players consist of these 3 classes speaks volumes.

PvE instances too. If you are elementalist or necro they don’t even want you for group PvE.

In the thread where someone said elementalists are OP. Now I have seen it all.

@Above

You should roll an elementalist, you’d stop being able to macro 1-5 for success.

Jnaathra

Do take note that this post makes no mention about action against gold buyers. So the end result here is going to be the same as all other games. The bot population will go down, but no go away. They will ban bots and the ones still making money will steal or buy new accounts. As long as buyers are allowed to exist, there will always be sellers

This looks like an obvious solution but I have seen it fail miserably in other MMOs.

1) The gold sellers send (they are already doing so!) small amounts of money to lots of players, so many accounts get “tainted” by their illicit gold.

2) I have been in a MMO where people would purposedly buy gold sellers or even duped stuff and send it to their adversaries. And the latter got perma banned with endless issues to get their accounts back (I am talking of like 2 months to get accounts back).

“Made a new law, found a new workaround”.

Best class, as in most complete, well rounded, with deep enough gameplay and versatility: Guardian.
Warrior comes close, it’s more for the “faceroll” crowd though.
Thief is cool too but ATM too much slammed in the “2 buttons class” category for it to be appreciated just for the class properties.

On the opposite spectrum, Necro = top bugged class and Elementalist = extreme case of “jack of all the trades master of none” but with bad made traits so their stances don’t mesh well enough, only (some) combos are well done. So, reward ends up being minimal compared to the effort.

To me Elementalist is the Magus of Warhammer Online or the Druid of WoW (before WoLTK): for years they’d been problematic classes, any bold update risking to make them OP so they got timid updates that would just show their underlying design frailty even more.

Thieves too get refused. Both are seen as “constantly dead, useless in dungeons” classes.

People get surprised when they pay > 60s in repairs and I spend 6s in the same run though

Awesome!
That “blink + AoE Earth” will be severely nerfed though, you can bet your life on that.

About the “ROI” comments. I put GW2 Elementalist on the same level of a Warhammer Online Engineer (less the WAR Engineer ability to spec for big burst with a morale ability).
Able to do a bit of everything, it’s mostly a stumbling block on the path of other classes that will waste some time (short time in case of certain classes) killing them to go ahead with their business. The keyword for them was “they are annoying”. Not dangerous, just annoying.
On my guild forum there’s a massive inter-class analysis (lots of spreadsheets) proving how even going the most useless DPS tank build, the ele is still below the minimum required defense to be considered sufficiently survivable.

This also brings up another topic. Kyros is doing an admirable job. Like other competitive guilds he’s studying, theorycrafting, testing builds and gear combos, really squeezing off the “with this build I crit for 300 higher on 62% of the crits” limit cases.

Now, in other MMOs I have seen most classes trying this kind of extreme optimization, it’s proof the classes are fairly balanced when people are spending hours to squeeze out that tiny further advantage.

In GW2 instead I have never, never bothered doing this big work for my warrior, because… it’s not even needed. I mean, why care for the 0.5% elementalists who will woop my posterior when I can 3 button smash 99.5%?
I am sure the other players think the same, they just see Ele = free score.
Who cares if once a week you meet the Kyros who will, with great fatigue and flawless execution, beat your warrior | thief | mesmer | guardian?

The very fact he’s so dedicated into squeezing out the last few hundreds damage after long study and spec testing is a testament of how hard is to achieve just parity with another class played by a mediocre player.

1) All the other classes spike damage needs to be toned down. Elementalist damage is OK for the health pool the GW2 classes got, while other classes dropping 70% of their opponents health in one hit is not.

2) Being survivable by speccing Earth should not be THE ONE way to be survivable. Each spec shold provide a different way to survive attacks. Earth provides “tankiness”, others should provide CC or similar. Even higher DPS (fire spec?) would work as tank, following the “gank is tank” doctrine.

3) Downed status lacks of an interrupt skill.

4) Elite skills and several cantrips are way too mediocre compared to other classes’.

5) Speccing for bleeds should actually yield similar effects than speccing for direct damage. The scaling is so poor that – also considering how many condition removal skills are in game – it’s not really competitive. To add insult to injury, the very low condition spec damage happens to be in the same spec we must go to have some basic survivability.

Aries.5182:

Why is carrion so popular? In dungeons and pvp, bleed builds are great, but for general pve, they’re stupid and not worth the effort. Power vitality and condition damage is such poor synergy for stat combos. I think way too many eles overestimate how much power they’re really getting when they put so much effort into speccing power.

And condition damage is ONLY good if you’re stacking conditions (read: bleed). I don’t understand why so many eles tend to forget this.

They don’t get carrion because they love bleed specs but because in order to survive a sneeze you must be earth spec => bleed specs.

Same result, opposite reasons.