Guild Wars 2

Mesmer is IMO the best class at utilizing a GC build. In fact, I really don’t see the point of not running full berserker’s on a mesmer given their damage avoidance potential. Of course not necessarily true for every build but still. Case and point: I’d never roam w/ a GC Ele in WvW.

Btw, Easymode from Anchorhead?

Nero —

I ran shatter build with S/P and found the build to be way too squishy (likely due to my lack of experience with S/P). Maybe I’m not used to using frenzy defensively. Also, leap seems to miss A LOT – maybe I don’t understand the mechanic that well given I haven’t really played with S/P before. Also, condi dmg completely owns this build. Is that typically a hard counter for shatter? As soon as I see someone trying to stack DOTs, should I GTFO? Condi damage ranger and blossom spamming thief (ranger more so than thief) completely shut me down.

General question: With your build, Do you open in S/P or do you typically open in GS? I imagine a burst/sustained damage goes something like open in GS, mirror, berserker, shatter, S/P, duelist, magic bullet, leap, frenzy, shatter?

What’s the opening sequence like with this build? Are you starting out in staff getting all your clones/phantasm up for chaos armor then shattering in GS and leaving iZerker up to chase if they’re not dead?

What’s the latest & greatest burst build given ytday’s changes? Off from work today and need a change of pace from my condi dmg build _ for some hotjoin fun.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckzzc9colnvoolbvM9MGxGVaMascs8khG7khd7kiO7070M7kGW70V7owZ70m

This is the condition damage build that I run in WvWvW.

Armor – Cleric’s
Weaps – Carrion
Accs – Carrion

With food and sigil of corruption on my SB, I can get condi dmg to ~1400. With signet of malice and assassin’s reward, I can last enough in most fights (especially multiple opponents) to stack enough condi dmg to wear down my enemy. The problem I’ve found with this build is chasing down beaten up opponents without wasting all my initiative to restack death blossom (i.e. by using IAarrow or HS) to kill them before they pop their heals. If my opponents isn’t a necro and does not run early enough, I generally had a lot of success with this build in WvWvW.

I might try a more balanced power/crit dmg/condi dmg build this weekend. Anyone have some suggestions?

Well I’m probably going to “call it a night” for my GW2 days in the next 24 hours but here’s one last ditch effort to fix my WvW FPS:

Everything off/low as it can go – 10-20 FPS in large WvW fights.

1) Windowed vs. Fullscreen – does this matter?
2) My monitor’s refresh rate is 120hz – does this matter?
3) Anything to disable in nvidia control panel?

System is i7 920 D0 @ 4ghz, GTX 570, 6gb 1600mhz ram

So theres no benefit at all given that the other place i’d allocate stats to would he either vit (ehhhh) or healing power (which doesnt really scale well AFAIK)? Isnt there a min crit fmg multiplier without any +crit dmg gear?

I might swap in the crit % sigil for sigil of fire or something along those lines

HI all,

I just started playing a thief in WvW and am running a D/D SB 0-0-20-30-20 build.

Right now I’m thinking of buying the following gear:

Armor – Mix of Knight’s to get me to ~20% crit chance and the rest either Cleric’s for some increased healing power or Pow/Tough/Vit – not sure if Cleric’s is really worth it here given how healing scales.  Primary focus here is Toughness given the remainder of the gear will be Carrion.
Runes – Undead.
Accessories – Carrion.
Weapons
Daggers: Carrion with Sigil of Agony (longer bleeds) and Superior Sigil of Accuracy (to get me ~25% crit)
Bow: Knight’s with + Sigil of Corruption (to stack condi dmg)

Any thoughts on the above?  I feel that the gear combo would give me good condi dmg (should be above 1k after stacking Sigil of Corruption ) and tankiness/power.  Also, I’m investing in getting my crit chance to ~25% but how beneficial is it given I have no crit dmg?

Many thanks

Re-posting since I can’t seem to quote from prior page:
————-
Hey guys,
I have the following system:
i7 920 @ 4.2ghz
6gb 1600mhz DDR3
GTX 570
Corsair 1000W PSU
I’m having a very hard time to get any sort of smooth gameplay out of WvWvW. Unless it’s a 1×1 fight, my FPS plummets. To the point its SWTOR Ilum dejavu all over again – 15-30fps max. Attached are m file graphics settings and I’m using drivers “306.02-desktop-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-english-beta” Any help is appreciated.
Also, is there anything else that may be causing this that’s not GPU related? If there’s a hand laundry list somewhere that I can go through that would be very helpful. Thanks.
EDIT – I run the game in 1920×1080 windowed fullscreen.
————————

My OC is rock solid with no temp throttling. I’ve been running this OC since summer [2009 or was 2010?] and always did a 24 hr Prime stress every few months to see if it’s been stable. M FPS issue only comes into play when there are a lot of character models around i.e. WvW, Zerg DEs, —- the *****only other game***** where this was ever an issue was SWTOR Ilum — and that’s a proven engine optimization fail.

Even under full load, I don’t hit above 60c on any of my 4 cores – I forgot the optimal threshold from EVGA for heavy OCs but I don’t believe 60c is an issue – please correct me if I’m wrong here.

If someone can post some helpful avenues to explore to test whether my CPU is indeed the issue – please go ahead. I’m happy to go test and provide some results.

Posting things like “LOL NOOB ITS NOT YOUR GPU ITS YOUR CPU, KTHXBYE” is not very helpful. I also wish Anet would make an official post with different tweaks to make to your system to improve performance. Yes, I understand no two systems are alike but some general housekeeping the believe we need to perform prior to playing WvW would be very helpful.

Just my 2 cents

Hey guys,

I have the following system:

i7 920 @ 4.2ghz
6gb 1600mhz DDR3
GTX 570
Corsair 1000W PSU

I’m having a very hard time to get any sort of smooth gameplay out of WvWvW. Unless it’s a 1×1 fight, my FPS plummets. To the point its SWTOR Ilum dejavu all over again – 15-30fps max. Attached are m file graphics settings and I’m using drivers “306.02-desktop-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-english-beta” Any help is appreciated.

Also, is there anything else that may be causing this that’s not GPU related? If there’s a hand laundry list somewhere that I can go through that would be very helpful. Thanks.

EDIT – I run the game in 1920×1080 windowed fullscreen.

Kevin – do you mind sharing your gear set?

Awesome vid. What gear set are you using (incl accessories) if you don’t mind me asking?

Thanks

Is it possible to gear up in Shaman like gear from SPvP for a tanky/condi dmg DD build or is that not available in WvW and you always need to have a power-based build?

Hi all, can this gear set (i.e. Shaman’s amulet in SPvP) be crafted in PvE/WvW?

If not, how can I go about obtaining it?

Thanks

I just can’t find anymore use for my ele other than keep fighting on a glass cannon staff build and some CCing in big open field battles where I’m not getting targeted – yes you will completely own people with AOE spikes but it’s getting very very boring for me to play like this. Obviously roaming with one is complete suicide (backstab + heartseeker = insta death in all zerker gear). I can roll my defensive condi dmg dagger/dagger build from SPvP which I know is very strong for 1v1/1v2 but it’s still not going to be as good for roaming as other classes in WvW.

So, what to do? Would love some suggestions if anyone else has felt this way and did something to change their playstyle but since early last week I’ve barely been doing any WvW at all (all SPvP). Thanks.

Essentially all mine are very close to each other and I extensively use the Shift modifier. A lot of people don’t like that approach but this is how I’ve been gaming for a long time so it works for me:

Fire – Earth Swapping: Shift 1-4
Abilities: 1-5
Heal: Shift+F
Util 1: R
Util 2: Shift+R
Util 3: T
Elite: Shift+T

Asking the question from the standpoint of running a glass cannon staff build. Some of the extra might stacking/healing from the blast finishers is nice but I can’t help to think the 10 points are better utilized somewhere else. Thoughts?

I guess I’m so used to running the trait on my SPvP staff support build I need some justification for getting rid of it in WvWvW.

These are my settings and I’m doing exactly what you guys both described above.

http://imageshack.us/f/823/rtlb.png/

I make sure to deselect my target every time. Am I missing something here?

How do I get the skill to actually move me forward? Even with auto attack off, and facing the way I want to head, I seem to zap back to the 5 man hit squad I’m usually trying to run away from?

I’m only going to address issues I feel are completely out of whack as opposed to saying "increase dmg on [x] or lower the cd on [y]
- Downed state: complete overhaul needed
- RtL: fix RNG pathing
- Staff Air 2: complete overhaul needed. As is, it’s completely useless. You’re either a) taking more damage due to casting it than the ability would prevent in the first place or b) losing out on a whole lot of DPS. I think this is hands down the biggest fail ability we have next to:
- Staff Water 1: LOL….

Or will I just get torn apart?

Should I go for pow/tuf/vit?

I agree to some extent but an Enc in EQ1 was designed as a support class. Soloing with one was extremely inefficient but the class was a must in any high level group (e.g. Sebilis AOE). I don’t think anyone really rolled a Enc with the intention to solo/DPS top dawg and then was somehow surprised they were not as competitive in those departments as say Necros, Wizs, Mags or Druids.

Charm/mez soloing was fun (I camped FBSS all day that way in LGuk) but was a huge PIA compared to a Necro that just rooted, dotted, and stuck his pet on a mob while reading the internet.

Jasher.6580:

Volatility.6729:

The bump from greens/rares to exotic is very marginal..

Are you being serious, or are you trolling? The health increase alone is significant. That’s a level 75 dungeon. Let’s talk about a level 75 going in there with level 75 blues and greens and not level 80 exotic gear.

Please do the % increase math on same level greens vs exo. If you’re telling me that multiple is somehow completely game changing you’re either clueless or trolling yourself

This is like SWTOR deja vu all over again with gear tiering QQ

It’s not a gear check. It’s a coordinated effort check. The bump from greens/rares to exotic is very marginal. Throw in a random PUG full of exos vs. a balanced guild group on Vent all in greens and see who does better.

Did 3 successful runs ytday on Blackgate with a PUG. No yellows from any chests with 100+ MFs and the Exo repairs from kiting room zerging = near wash in the end and a total waste of time.

I find it extremely difficult to believe a PUG can successfuly out DPS the spawn rate in the kiting room. This is why you need to test these types of changes and fine tune them prior to implementing them. Unless the intention here was to turn dungeons into a super-coordinated raid-like encounter?

Level alts quicker while you can – which is what I’m doing. You never know how crafting will effect xp gains in the near-term if they decide on some sort of a nerf.

In large open field fights (while using Staff) your damage is honestly going to be neglible. Your value add will primarily come from 1) AOE CCing (static field, frozen ground, shockwave, earth 4, signet of earth, etc) and 2) AOE healing. Spec for combos/boons.

In small open field fights (i.e. those 1v1 – 3v3 you’ll find yourself in now and then), I’d swap to S/D or D/D.

In keep fighting, meteor and earth 2 becomes a lot more interesting since there are still many many terribads who will literally just stand there like drones attacking a gate while you pound your offensive AOEs on them. Throw in static field/frozen ground after you get off meteor and you’ll get a good amount of free badges.

My personal favorite WvWvW build is a Glyph build with Evasive Arcana. 0/20/10/10/30. You can quickly stack might into the high teens and start AOEing while keep fighting and have plenty of combo fields to enhance your CC. 30 arcane also synergizes well with S/D or D/D.

Recommend Zerker gear since our damage is terribad to begin with.

Just my 2 cents after a couple weeks of heavy WvWvW.

Edit – to your question re: condi damage, I would avoid with a Staff build. Can’t really stack effieciently enough as other classes because of a) the CDs on earth 2 and fire 3 and b) the CDs between attunement swapping

Artificing is really that cheap, or did you already have a lot of the mats to help you along the way? I was debating leveling it to make my staffs since the markup on a crafted 80 exo staff (vs the materials needed) is a few g’s and I need to make two, so if I can save 4-5gs and get it to 400 at the same time that would be great.

MattVid.7905:

Volatility.6729:

Thanks.

Re: crafting yellows yourself – is it not more economic just to buy them off the TP (~20s) if you don’t have the mats readily available, or are you saying you’ll generally be better off because you have a shot at getting more than 1?

It is more economic. I can craft like 4-5 yellows for less than a gold. I average 6-7 ectos from 5 items. This is considerably better than paying like 1.4g buying them on the AH. The only thing you have to worry about is that it is a gamble. You could get zero, but you could also get 3 from one item. And it feels like it averages out at 1-2 per item when doing them in bulk.

Thanks, that’s what I thought. I’ll report back here tonight to see how it goes with some figures and stats.

Thanks.

Re: crafting yellows yourself – is it not more economic just to buy them off the TP (~20s) if you don’t have the mats readily available, or are you saying you’ll generally be better off because you have a shot at getting more than 1?

EQ1 Epic Weapons grind back in the day >>>>>>> anything in GW2. The flipside is that those weapons actually had extremely unique abilities which made them worth to farm (e.g. free rez cast for Clerics, super speed buff for Enchanters). GW2 legendaries seem to be purely cosmetic with a minor improvement over Exos.

Thanks – but does the yield increase for lvl 80 items or is it total RNG from 70-80 with no success scaling?

Has anyone experimented which items have the richest yield of salvaging globs of ecto? thanks in advance

Actually d/d is totally viable in WvWvW – it all depends on the situation and the number of people you’re fighting. In large open fights/keep fighting you’re better off using staff. Otherwise stick to d/d for smaller fights. I try to keep a well rounded build/gear set that allows me to utilize both weapons on the fly.

Bsquared.3421:

Volatility.6729:

- Water 5: needs a seriously reduced cast time given the long CD. It’s basically a self-CC if you’re trying to cast this thing in the middle of a fight you’ll take more damage than the eventual heals especially if focused

Most of what you said is fairly true (I don’t agree 100%, but generally yah). However, I think people underestimate healing rain. That skill is AWESOME!!

Yes, the amount of healing it provides alone isn’t great, although 2000 healing in the form of regen is pretty good. Also, and I could be mistaken here, but since it’s a 4 s regen buff on a 9s field, you can get the regen to happen twice in a single cast (raising the default healing amount to over 4k.) if you stand in it for the full duration. This isn’t that hard to do even when kiting cause the field is HUGE.

{Note, as an aside, if you’re using a staff in PvP, it better be WvWvW anyway, staff in sPvP is just suicide.}

Also, HR provides 3 conditions removals and most importantly, a massive 9s water field. In dungeons, for example, if the entire group knows to set off blast finishers (even DPS oriented ones) when they see the rain cloud, it’ll set off AOE healing waves. 2 or 3 blast finishers and the entire group can be healed to full in seconds. It’s very powerful. Hell, sometimes i’ll run inside the rain cloud and use arcane wave near some teammates even if I’m not striking a SINGLE mob, the healing waves unleashed are just too powerful to pass up.

I 100% agree with you on how awesome the skill is once its casted, especially paired with evasive arcana, but the cast time/channeling with lead you to take a lot of damage to the point it becomes a wash (for yourself, not so much your team). You should be allowed to cast it while on the move.

Looking for examples of what others are running in WvWvW for staff / D/D swap builds i.e. staff for bunker fighting and d/d (or s/d) for small group roaming.

I’m using a 0/20(quick glyphs+inscription)/10(armor)/10(cleanse)/30(ele attune,blasting staff; swaps for windborne when i go d/d, and evasive arcana)

Utility – signet of earth (D/D) / glyph of stoms (staff), mist form and arcane wave

Staff – Berserker gear. Really easy to quickly stack a lot of might with Evasive Arcana/Inscription for high AOE damage
DD – Invader’s gear. Also quick to stack might + have a good amount of survival for roaming

Interested to see what others are doing that don’t run staff 100% of the time in wvwvw

Re: Staff. Major comment is that all of our auto attacks are extremely weak

- Fire 1 needs a serious buff to cast time/damage
- Fire 3 is useless since you’re not going to be doing a condi dmg build with Staff given the limited amount of bleeds/burns. Needs to be replaced with a DD that’s on a reasonable cooldown
- Fire 5 – many people might disagree with me here but I say each wave makes every single thing in the radius take damage and not RNG. This is supposed to be the bread and butter for damage in a staff build. It’s not bad for getting people off a door but realistically you’re not going to kill anybody who’s actually paying attention.
- Water 5: needs a seriously reduced cast time given the long CD. It’s basically a self-CC if you’re trying to cast this thing in the middle of a fight you’ll take more damage than the eventual heals especially if focused
- Water 4: Lengthen the chill effect
- Air 1: terribad damage
- Air 2: useless. 1 attack blind for a very long cast time – you’ll probably take more hits while casting than it’s worth to blind that 1 attack

etc etc etc

Flame Burst is a blast finisher. Evasive Arcana does wonders for might stacking for Staff Eles. You’re basically stacking might every single time Lava Front is off CD while in fire. It’s also amazing with AOE healing with Geyser / Rain you can basically get like 4+ heals off in a row if you’re quick enough and Arcane Wave is off CD. This is amazing for WvWvW if you have a couple eles that everyone is stacking on for heals when doing keep rushing etc.

vengeance,

I just don’t see how it’s all about the gear – even if I have full exotic I can’t imagine the % increase in power that would get me to 2-3k damage which is basically a 4x from where I am currently. Maybe it is all about the gear and I’m doing it wrong. Do you mind sharing which set/weapon you’re using? Thanks

Maybe I’m thinking about it the wrong way – I was basing the above after looking at full green berserker vs. full exotic berserker power delta (all slots), which is roughly ~23%.

I need some serious help in this department. I’m running a 80 ele in wvwvw with full green berserker set (except staff, which is pow/tuf/vit) and staff 1 in fire does around 500-600 damage at best. Might stacking I can get it to 700-800 but obviously this is not enough. Getting outhealed/regened by every class. Extremely frustrating. Would love to hear any tips on how to improve staff damage other than use a different weapon.

The frustrating part is that obviously I’m in full glass cannon gear and anytime my defensive skills are on CD (e.g. signet of earth, mist form, frozen ground, magnetic aura) anyone with a gap closer just rips me apart.

I’m trying to see if others have messed around with drivers/in-game/NVCP settings to get 50-60+ FPS in large fights (i.e. WvWvW and raid events) without taking a huge hit to image quality — I seem to be only be able to get that when setting everything to low,

Are there any settings in particular which are huge FPS hogs?

I’m currently running a GTX 570 with the 306.02-desktop-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-english-beta drivers

Any help is greatly appreciated

Currently playing an ele on Fort Asp but am willing to move servers. Preferably would like the guild to be a on medium pop server where the queue times aren’t as bad.

Just curious – are most people farming wvwvw badges or orr karma or mats for crafting? i’ve kind of been in limbo since getting to 80. have a green berserker set and some pow/tough/vit wvwvw karma gear. wvwvw queues on my server are horrendous (fort asp) and the only thing i’ve been really doing are the two defend aoe events in cursed shore (the two entrances to the penatent path) to farm mats/gold. would love to hear what others are doing

Posted this earlier in the ele forums but figured it’s better suited here.

Lava Front:

I will click the ground (also tried with double tapping the keybind) and it’s basically 50/50 whether I’ll actually start casting or not afterwards. Seems to happen the most when I’m swapping attunements and trying to fast cast Lava Front to hit my Erruption combo field. I’m guessing this has something to do with Fireball being on autocast? EDIT – Also, Arcane Wave in Lava Front for the blast combo is not perfect and RNGs as well (although to a smaller extend than below)

Burning Retreat:

Seems to be total RNG when trying to combo Burning Retreat and Erruption/earth projectile(s). Placement of the Erruption along the fireline seems to have no effect. It’s just total chance that you’ll get the combo to go off or not. EDIT – Also, this isn’t a timing issue i.e. I will see the Erruption go off while the fireline from Burning Retreat is still on the ground but get no combo credit (no fly text / might stack increases)

Why is this frustrating? Eles already have kittened damage and not getting might stacks is increadibly annoying.

Lava Front:
Has anyone else experienced a delay/glitch when casting Lava Front?

I will click the ground (also tried with double tapping the keybind) and it’s basically 50/50 whether I’ll actually start casting or not afterwards. Seems to happen the most when I’m swapping attunements and trying to fast cast Lava Front to hit my Erruption combo field. I’m guessing this has something to do with Fireball being on autocast?

Burning Retreat:
Seems to be total RNG when trying to combo burning retreat and Erruption/earth projectile(s). Placement of the Erruption along the fireline seems to have no effect. It’s just total chance that you’ll get the combo to go off or not.

Isn’t this also true for fire?

What I’ve noticed: if you’re using staff and have Fireball on auto it will attack soon as you swap. This becomes a serious PIA if you switched to fire from earth because you casted Eruption and want to combo field with Lava Front but that Fireball now delays everything.