Guild Wars 2

They should give us a slow fall in the air trait line!

It does seem kind of odd that Elementalist is the only profession without one but these traits seem incredibly situational anyway.

I think elementalist are hard for the devs to balance for a couple reasons. One is because they are committed to making us glass cannons— which is inherently hard to balance. Too much burst damage and it’s annoying to play against us, too little and the trade off isn’t worth it for the elementalist.

The other is because of how attunements work. How do you keep a class balanced that has more skills than everyone else? Sometimes I feel like our attunements actually make us less versatile than the other professions, since we are locked into one range and theme for each weapon. What they seemed to have done is take ten skills and split them in half, so that you have to press two buttons for the same effect as the other professions. This does give us more flexibility in how to use our skills but comes at the cost of making the profession more “work.”

I like vistas but think they should give you more of a benefit besides just a pretty view. You are so high up, why not reveal some of the map around that area? I also think if you mouse over a POI it should give you a little lore blurb about WHY it’s a point of interest.

I don’t see why it’s different than POI or hearts. Honestly I’m not a fan of most hearts, but if I want map completion I have to do them.

I think their is a pretty even balance of classes. The only one I don’t notice a lot is the necromancer, but I still see a good amount of them.

I wish you could favorite weapons like you could dyes. They also might launch a “loadout” feature where you can save gear set ups and switch between them, so that would help instead of ooc weapon switching, which they probably won’t do because it would be confusing for new players.

I guess I’ll try it but I like the auto-targeting option, just not when I’m switching attunements out of combat. I’ll have to try playing with it turned off. It ruins my eruption pre-casts also.

I can’t stand narrowly winning a fight only to be put into downed state and instantly killed because vapor form is on a such a long cooldown to start with. I think vapor form should start with a 5 second cooldown (and then go on cooldown for 20 seconds) so you at least have a chance to escape and make use of churning earth.

Playing as an elementalist really makes me hate the downstate. Maybe I’m just jealous or it’s a case of the “grass is greener” but it seems like every class has a pvp interrupt of some kind. Only hunters feel our pain.

Even without that trait I constantly start attacking whatever is closest to me when I change attunements to air.

Verene.1480:

Ethros.1453:

In time there will be more money flowing in the economy and the prices will not be that bad.

Those are merchant prices, so they aren’t going to change unless ANet changes them.

I think he meant that while the prices will still be the same, everyone will have more money so they won’t seem as bad as they do now.

Don’t forget about earth attunement when supporting with staff. Elementalists are the best at stacking weakness which reduces the damage mobs can do plus you have an extra blast finisher. It’s easier to land a blast finish with eruption if you cast it and then set your field on top of it before it’s had a chance to explode. With evasive arcana, eruption, and arcane wave you can instantly put out a lot of might stacks or healing.

It’s really strange. Sometimes I’ve gotten bronze also, even though I felt like I was participating the whole time. Other times I get gold just for running through an event and tagging one mob with my static field and arcane blast to give myself swiftness. I don’t know what the difference is. Too bad you can’t click on the medal or something and see why you achieved that rank.

They’ve said they will continue to add to the game and have expansion packs. I don’t know if a big feature like guild houses would be added via patch though but I think they will add new dynamic events at least.

They should pick up loot for us.

I didn’t realize that! It seems like they missed an opportunity there for a money maker for crafters but I suppose that increases the difficulty of obtaining a legendary.

I wonder if as time goes by everyone will shift towards artificing and cooking then, since they make items you could continue to use once you max out your crafting and craft gear for yourself.

Do you think people would be able to make money on runes and sigils? It seems like there are too many other avenues to acquire the things that can be crafted.

I don’t think the value of a short whisper or more likely a random group invite popping up on your screen is worth the convenience of automatically assembling a group.

It’s like using the self-checkout at the grocery store or going to a clerk. Sure it’s nice when you get a nice clerk at the check-stand who is cheery and says hello, but you still have to wait longer vs the self-checkout. And sometimes you get a not-so-nice clerk who just goes through the motions. You still have the choice though, just like you would if their was a dungeon finder. You don’t have to use the self-checkout.

Also having it be an automated process helps people who feel apprehensive already about doing a dungeon. It serves as an icebreaker.

At first I balked at the high prices for 20 slot bags, but then I realized that I really don’t need such giant bags. With deposit collectibles and how easy it is to find merchants to sell junk to I never run out of space.

I wonder if the legendary item components will become profitable as time goes on?

I personally undertook crafting because it’s fun, I wanted to make gear I could use myself, and for the experience.

There is crafting in Ebonhawke although when I was there I couldn’t find anyone to sell me thread.

Kryil.6045:

I’ve played WoW for over 6 years. The argument is the simple truth.

Whether or not the dungeon finder did or did not “destroy” “something” in WoW doesn’t have any bearing on how a dungeon finder would operate in GW2.

The simple truth is that in WoW their were two ways to get the tokens needed to get better gear: raids and dungeons. You couldn’t do raids constantly, so that left dungeons. What reason would there be to be out in the world of Azeroth? Most zones were way under your level and provided no challenge and no rewards at all.

In GW2 there are multiple ways to get rewarded besides dungeons. In fact dungeons are completely unnecessary. Why would a dungeon finder, which just makes it easier to find groups, suddenly “destroy” all the work ArenaNet put into the non-dungeon content. In fact, without a dungeon finder I’m afraid that the opposite will happen and people won’t bother doing dungeons at all, considering the rewards are hard to get per amount of effort put in compared to other avenues and it takes more effort to find a group than to jump into a dynamic event.

The problem is that the events need to scale. I agree that there is some lack of variety but I’m not sure how they can tackle it considering events need to be able to be completed by 2 people or by 20.

It wouldn’t work, people already post events in area chat and there is no way to stop players from doing that unless you prevent communication entirely.

I don’t think so Xenigma as all humans talk to a priestess of dwayna no matter what they choose. It also doesn’t effect the prayer utility skills, all humans have access to all of them.

Sarcazar.6148:

You consider trying to find a group lazy, but ask for the very tool that turned the WoW community into idiots sitting in SW and Org waiting until they get accepted into virtual loot-machines?

Don’t blame the Dungeon Finder for that and WoW is a very different game. WoW doesn’t have any rewards for exploring— it doesn’t have dynamic events. People sit in the cities because there is no reason to go out into the world because the dungeons give you the tokens that are the ONLY way to upgrade your gear. It’s the way rewards are doled out in WoW that resulted in everyone waiting in queues to play NOT the dungeon finder.

The queue would be a lot shorter than WoW anyway because you wouldn’t have to wait on a tank. Plus how is it different to wait in a queue than to spam chat? At least with the queue you can do other things while you wait.

Sarcazar, if they gave a set 40-50% then it would always be the same whatever your true level was. The OP meant that it was silly to give say 20k exp for AC and 30k for CM regardless of level.

Kaldor.3567:

Xenteko.1238:

I cannot believe that you could actually release an MMO these days where people have to stand outside the instance spamming /s to manually get a group together.

It’s incredibly lazy and makes what should be a simple affair take far more time than it needs to.

I think it is incredibly lazy to not actually have to find a group by being social. Its not like the dungeons are required like in some MMOs to move forward with the development of your character.

I think the social part is actually playing the dungeon with other players, not spamming a generic message on a chat channel or whispering everyone on your friends list. The inclusion of an easy way to find other people who want to do a dungeon doesn’t preclude those who find a group through other means from doing so. It just helps people out who need that extra member or who are playing at a time without any friends on.

I agree Shadowz.2415. The sPvP interface is already there. Just give each of the dungeon info guides who stand outside the queue ability. Without tanks and healers queues wouldn’t have the same problems that they have in other mmo’s with dungeon finders.

I really hope it’s just a case that it wasn’t something they were able to get in before launch and not something they are opposed to doing. In maps like Frostsound Gorge I see people spamming for a good 30 to 40 minutes looking for people to join their group. That’s just sad.

I dislike playing the trading post because frankly I’m just not good at it and it really doesn’t seem like there is anything to farm that makes money. The “highly traded” goods list all sell for so little!

I’m hopeful that it will just take time for the trading post to stabilize and for solid money making avenues to develop.

The trading post is lacking a lot of filtering options in my opinion. It’s more difficult to find gear to use then it needs to be.

I have a lot of questions about condition damage. When in groups conditions are capped— so how does that work for individual damage and condition damage/duration?

That is a lot of deaths for only being level 16. It sounds like you are used to standing still and attacking the enemy, since the other two professions you mention have built in “tanks.” Either elementalist isn’t for you, or you need to learn how to dodge.

I would stick with staff. Get the mob to stand in your lava font and circle around them and dodge through them so they stay in the circle. Using burning retreat when you run out of dodge rolls and then repeat. When there are multiple mobs start off with meteor shower and, if none of them are ranged, try to gather them up so they are in a bunch and then follow the above strategy. When there are ranged mobs focus on them first while kiting the melee mobs.

You can do it all with just sticking with fire, and if you are having trouble it can be overwhelming to try to switch elements. Once you are comfortable with killing mobs without relying on the CC of the other elements once you bring them into play you will be able to handle anything.

Where are you getting these statistics? I’m not saying it isn’t true but we can’t just make statistics up.

Personally I think the focus might see more love as the game becomes more strategic as time goes on. Right now many Elementalists are probably going full burst mode because they can get away with it.

I personally would use the focus if I had a main hand I wanted to use with it but so far I’ve been sticking with staff because I know it best.

I hate being underwater so much. I’ve tried tons of different things and none of it helps.

It also annoys me how some traits don’t work underwater— for example Evasive Arcana doesn’t work consistently underwater. Am I supposed to have a completely different build just to go underwater?

I hate how the whole gameplay seems to completely shift underwater. On land I can be mobile and avoid mobs attacks. That doesn’t work for me underwater. I basically swim in their face and just switch through the attunements using everything on cooldown until it dies. Which takes a lot longer than on land.

The best thing that’s worked for me is relying heavily on arcane skills to finish mobs off.

I haven’t finished my story yet, so I’m still curious if the choice of patron god has any effect on the story.

I choose “noble” “unknown parents” and I really liked the story line.

Yes and it sours my view of the downed state. As an elementalist in spvp going downed is the same as dying. In very few instances do I even have a chance of rallying and my individual effort is not going to change that.

I don’t understand how the disparity between downed stats is allowed. I’ve been against many a thief who was able to turn the tables on me, and I’ve stopped trying to “finish them” because it’s pointless. I just attack them normally until they die.

I also think that the underwater downed state needs to be looked at. Underwater combat is already bogus in my view, and then the underwater downed state where people go invulnerable when at the surface is ridiculous.

That might explain the guardian but the elementalist?

It also did not reset for me and I’m sure I finished it on August 29th. Maybe the month actually started early? When did others finish it?