Guild Wars 2

Too hard to predict the meta with all the incoming changes. I was going to say bomb engineers might start getting really annoying but their survivability is getting a slight nerf and their big condi trait is also getting moved deeper into bomb tree.

A brand new player typically doesn’t want to wander into something that sounds official like “Tournament” or “Ranked”. They just want to mess around with their builds (usually they just copy their leveling/PvE builds) in an open and casual environment, something harmless for both them and their teammates and won’t cause frustration. Hotjoin is perfect for that.

But I feel the current layout/tutorial doesn’t really make the differences between Hotjoin and Tournament clear (and it should be VERY clear), it’s most likely how lvl 1’s end up wandering into ranked matches.

I think rank 10 is a decent sweet-spot for to allow people to queue for TPvP, maybe rank 15 at the absolute most. There’s still a lot to learn once you start ranked matches and start paying attention to the finer details/tactics, something you simply can’t do in hotjoin.

Immobilize meta is here, as predicted.

Nebilim.5127:

How does priority cleaning works? And corrupt boons?

And why it seems vul have priority over burn?And Vul have priority over 6 stacks of torment?

That’s super-advanced stuff brah!

Nice tips but they are honestly a bit more on the advanced side. Someone who has just stumbled into Heart Of The Mists won’t even know what “far point” or “bunker” means, or what roles even are. All those are terms are created by the community but aren’t officially mentioned anywhere in the game.

One of the biggest barricades to learning ANY game, and I know this from experience (ironically) is figuring out what the hell all community-created terms/abbreviations mean.

For example when I was a Street Fighter IV newbie and started reading guides, I came across a whole ton of terms and then had to poke around the internet figuring out what the hell those words meant. Their definitions almost got “lost” in the countless threads/discussions surrounding the game where everyone brings it up, but everyone already knows what it means except for the poor newbie who wandered in :S

Mash Hog.5672:

I do each of these things to the best of my abilities and I have determined the most optimal builds (for my playstyle) for each one of these activities and I’m looking forward to see the builds other people run for their different activites!

Not fair to ask others to share their builds/playstyles when you won’t share your own :P

What about the Initiative buff coming in Dec 10? Isn’t the entire point of that to increase build diversity?

What are these Perplexity runes everyone keeps talking about and how do I get them in TPvP :P
In all seriousness, I’d love if you guys covered TPvP as well because I’ve always felt that’s where Ele’s need serious help (and ideas) rather than WvW where they’ve always done fine.

I used to love using RTL to get around the world quickly, it helped cut my leveling time.

But 40 seconds is ridiculous. Also 45 seconds on Fire Grab is ridiculous, it’s hard as hell to hit a moving target with that :S

Morderger.6298:

There needs to be a separate bridge for those people who have played 500 tourny games to someone who has done 10. Ranks 1-20 in their own little bracket, the rest of us can be paired together.

I don’t think there are enough players actively PvP’ing for that would be viable. You need a huge pool of players in order to segregate them like that while stopping PvP from turning into more of a ghost town than it already is, it would result in even longer queue times.

It REALLY isn’t about optimal builds guys, people know the internet exists. The majority of sensible players will look-up popular PvP builds for their class , but they will have absolutely no kittening clue how to play those builds due to lacking overall knowledge and experience. Speaking as an Ele who immediately dug-up popular builds before entering PvP and then proceeded to get his face smashed in for the first ~10-20 hours…yeah, it’s not about builds.

GW2 is simply one of those games where there’s no shortcut or easy way around learning PvP other than diving into it head-first and learning through experience.

One tip for newbies would be to discourage them from joining 8v8 hotjoin matches. That’s where some people get “shocked” and run away from PvP because that mode revolves so heavily around positioning and awareness, neither of which newbies have any clue about. Include somewhere that 5v5 is the best environment for learning how to play.
Maybe have a mode where only rank 1-10 players are pitted against each other (but that’s more of a case of matchmaking)…anyway that would be difficult to do given that PvP isn’t exactly overflowing with huge numbers of players.

Race: Asura
Sex: Female
Class: Engineer
Item: PvP Priory Boots (Medium)
Description: Dye glitch/inconsistency. The main bottom-portion of the boots (a fairly large portion of it) remains fixed to one reddish color and cannot be changed. It looks bizarrely out of place compared to the rest of the PvP Priory set which have no fixed colors. Take a look at attachments to see what I mean, I’ve never come across anything else like it.

Why I think it’s a bug, if you look at GW2 Wiki screenshots it clearly COULD be changed at some point: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Priory_armor_

I re-crafted the boots 3 times, it’s always the same. No runes added or anything, tried dye remover, different weapon/armor combinations (or being naked), still no luck. I REALLY want to wear these boots but that fixed color is making no sense.

Thank you.

I think there’s a dye bug with PvP Priory Medium Boots. It has 3 dye slots and each of those change something about the boots, but the main bottom part stays that “red” color and cannot be changed at all. It looks bizarrely out of place when the rest of the PvP Priory set doesn’t have anything like that…take a look at attachments to see what I mean.

Why I think it’s a bug, if you look at GW2 Wiki screenshots it clearly CAN be changed: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Priory_armor_

Perhaps something that came with recent patch(es)? I re-crafted the boots 3 times, it’s always the same. No runes added or anything. I really want to wear these boots but they are violating my blue/white theme

Base stats + healing signet = most warrior builds are extremely viable (if not OP).

Firstly, on an extremely frustrated note, WHY is Skyhammer part of TPvP when it needs so much fixing and tweaking? Why not keep it exclusive to hotjoin where people can enjoy their mindless chaos, and once it’s ready for competitive play, put it into TPvP rotation?

Please ADMIT that Skyhammer was purely an experimental thing, it holds a reputation as a joke/trolling map. I have little motivation to try and play “seriously” on Skyhammer because I know that my death is simply one fear/kb/pull away no matter how careful I am.

This map will never make sense as long as some classes/builds hold the advantage in terms of chain-CC or lots of stability. All other classes/builds in between basically have to hold B or spend a lot of time making friends with worms.

Two simple suggestions:
> Glass floors on point A and C need to go. Engi/Thief pull from stealth (among many other things) is just plain stupid.
> Skyhammer Laser needs a nerf – either you should be able to dodge it, OR the knockdown needs to go, OR the damage needs a nerf. A CC guardian/engineer can be devastating while controlling it and trying to stop them usually results in getting CC’d onto glass or off the edge.

pedrst.3127:

2 guardians, 2 necromansers and a thief in Skyhammer… are you serious?

Err I don’t think the matchmaking considers which classes are best/worst for Skyhammer :P
The very fact that Skyhammer exists in TPvP should be enough proof there are some things that we simply can’t understand about ArenaNet.

They’ve done an excellent job of all the improvements so far, but Skyhammer being part of TPvP map rotation is still something that eludes me. Some think it apparently encourages positioning, which makes me wonder if they have actually played Skyhammer.

sirflamesword.3896:

I faced one of these eles with my war earlier, hit my stability and hammer bashed him and he was dead before he blinked. Sorry there are builds out there that are direct counters to the “OP builds” that are played, but ele doesn’t have one of them.

Elementalists are currently countered by pretty much everything due to being so incredibly squishy, having no reliable evasion/survivability tools like what other squishy classes/builds still have access to.

Glass-cannon Ele’s are especially funny because they can die in literally 0.5 seconds, it’s often hard to tell what killed them.
I’ve can sometimes be at 100% health on my Ele, then a Thief opens on me, I start spamming abilities only to find that I’m already using Vapor Form…which is my downed ability…which means I already died and didn’t even realize it LOL.

I use it to find 8v8’s with 16+ slots but the filter seriously needs to be able to show me just servers with PLAYABLE slots, not spectator.

Justin ODell.9517:

That said, we have plans to resolve this issue as part of a pretty significant refactor and restructure that we’re well into, but that won’t be ready by year’s end.

Aww
Well I’m going to keep playing just because you said that, at least some form of solution is finally coming for 4v5’s and that makes me a happy little asura

Deified.7520:

Engineers are probably the most skill required class in the game on account of the apm required.

I’d argue that Elementalists require more skill, largely due to the fact that they have such low base health/defenses that they’re constantly teetering on the edge of life or death (regardless of build). Most Ele abilities require perfect positioning and timing and they rely far more on evades than engineers (squishy squishy)…at least engi’s don’t have ridiculously long cooldowns separating all their kits :P

Oh no, you mean bunker builds are actually hard to kill?

Also have you actually tried to play that build successfully, or is that “no skill spam” claim linked to you losing against a decent bunker engi?

Cool, so now we get to spam-salvage more junk into extra junk?

yanoch.7051:

Please tell me what 1 hit ability ou speak off? Since the nerf to stunt runes you have to be a really unlucky player to get the whole HB hit.

What about this Ele build?

<snip>

This one also

<snip>

I love when Ele’s run those builds! Just 1 dodge (or block) = all their damage gone, proceed to kill them in the next 2 seconds because they have absolutely no escapes, CC or defense whatsoever. Usually they die so fast that I don’t even know which of my abilities killed them ahahaha.

If you’re playing a hammer/longbow warrior you really shouldn’t be surprised at people screaming obscenities at you, it’s kinda expected.
It’s a combination of frustration at ArenaNet taking so long to roll out class balance patches, and frustration at players who shamelessly keep using mega-OP builds (like you :P).

Don’t take it personally, if you want to keep playing nobody can stop you. This game’s PvP community is actually not bad, nowhere near as toxic as some other communities I’ve seen.

Goob.9752:

I play a thief its all I’ve played since launch. If I knew what I know now and I could restart I’d probably either go engineer or elementalist

You can try Engineer but don’t complain about not having any easy escape tools and most classes getting a guaranteed stomp on you, especially Thieves with perma-blind field, any class/build with invis/stability/block/blind, etc :P

Also I would recommend staying away from Elementalist because in their current state you will spend most of your time hitting your head against your keyboard at how frustrating it is to play that class and being half as effective as any other class at any specific role.

Permanent Vigor from Invigorating Speed (kit-swapping) is getting a nerf in upcoming patch, 5 sec internal cooldown will be increased to 10 secs. Vigor uptime will be cut down to 50% (if they time the swaps perfectly) but they can still get perma-Swiftness with that trait. No biggie.

The class is still far less faceroll compared some other classes like Warriors or Minion/Spirit Rangers. At least you need to push buttons, have cooldown awareness and cycle through kits to be effective instead of having AI do most of the work…or only needing to use 2-3 skills (Warrior/Thief).

It’s not one I’ve tried but see how it works out for you. Just keep in mind you’re missing 20% condition duration that is gained from Explosives trait line, you have no way to get swiftness outside combat, you have no guaranteed Vigor (this can get very bad if you’re attacked), and overall this build really won’t be able to put out any pressure in an AoE situation. My recommended build has all those things :P

See how it goes :P

As far as I know Flamethrower simply isn’t an optimal weapon for neither power nor condition damage. Power is far better suited for rifle + toolbelt builds, and condition is far better suited for pistol + grenade builds.

Elixir gun is mostly used as a defensive/healing tool especially for group support, everything it does is great.

With Grenadier trait the total area of impact is quite large, your enemy doesn’t need to stand still in those circles. Even a single touch from any of the grenades will apply the full condition.
Just as an example, doing a quick swap between pistol / grenade and then throwing a single Shrapnel Grenade that crits will cause all this to happen: Bleeding (Shrapnel), Burning (Incendiary Powder), Poison (Sigil Of Doom) and Vulnerability (Steel-Packed Powder). Neat huh?
What’s even more awesome is once you master grenade-kiting, i.e. 180-running forwards and throwing grenades behind.

Beware that build has quite a long learning curve, since there are SO MANY abilities at your disposal. For new players jumping straight into that build, they may be confused and not sure what to do.

Go for a balanced build, sacrifice some survivability to increase damage output/CC or roaming capability.
With most solo PvP we see people going into one-purpose builds (full-bunker, full-glass, etc) forgetting that a middle ground does exist. Figure out what works for you

You can’t just directly compare Rifle and Pistol like that. One gets used as a primary damage source dealing direct damage (rifle), while the other is used in combination with kits (pistol + grenades/bombs) for dealing condition damage.

Pistol is great for stacking bleed and poison, but it’s best used along with either grenades, bombs and/or elixir gun. In PvP you should be using Rabid amulet which gives you condi damage, toughness and crit and use Nightmare runes.
Condi engineers are already very powerful, coming only second to Necros when it comes to unloading a barrage of conditions on people very quickly (AoE too).

Rifle engineers tend to use Berzerker amulet and dip heavily into Tools + Firearms (the infamous static discharge build) so they are very squishy with almost zero condition removal. If you’re using pistol + shield + grenades smartly, you should have no issues beating a rifle engi. Unload conditions, use shield reflect/block against toolbelt burst (very predictable), dodge/block rifle CC’s and watch them melt.

I know because I play mostly as berserker+rifle and a pistol+grenade condition engi is almost impossible to beat unless they are terrible. Here’s a good condi build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqqbH5SiF1LJyoCdGIF1leJqQ+95BblWQIA-ToAAzCpI+S9l7LzXyvsfN6Y+B

The Firearms traits are mainly up to you, but overall it’s a pretty deadly condi build with tons of survivability (dodge, healing and block).

Hold on ArenaNet, can we please address the issue of 4v5 matches first? All the finer stuff like class makeup and MMR/rank is really nothing compared to how much of a deciding factor disconnects/AFK players are. Surely ArenaNet’s own data reflects this?

Right now the most I can ask for is a proper 5v5 match. I’m fine with losing, because at least I know that both teams had 5 players who were playing the game!

Thank you.

Dazzlebutt, haha nicely creative 7/10

Mine’s an Engineer called Yay.

jsu.4370:

I’ll be rocking a d/d ele next patch.

+ s/d thief nerfed
+ stun warrior nerfed
+ Tempest Defense 60 cd to 25 cd
+ 5% to 10% increase dmg fire line
+ 16 attunement cd to 13 w/ no arcane traitline

30/30/10/0/0

Yes please run that build, that way I can kill you in roughly 0.5 seconds with my Engi or Mesmer haha. Or actually I don’t think I even need to bother, just random conditions and AoE damage flying around will be enough to kill you when fights break out on capture points.
Ele’s have what, 14k health +1800 armor ? All their survivability is tied to Arcane/Water + Cantrips.

Ele’s running Fire+Air builds = free glory.

SuperHaze.4210:

Very true. I guess I just miss being a healer (especially my disc priest and holy pally) and I felt that Anet completely disregarded a population of players who actually like to heal and provide full on support.

Disregarded? That wouldn’t be the right word for it, disregard means to ignore or not pay attention to. For several weeks/months before and after GW2 release we saw tons of discussions along the lines of “No healers omg!” and multiple Youtube videos also popping up about it.
It was a conscious and extremely calculated decision by ArenaNet to break-away from the standard MMO formula (Holy Trinity), and for the most part I would say they have pulled it off extremely well at least as far as PvE goes. Even in PvP it ultimately works well, class balance issues aside.

If you want to play a healer-esque role in GW2 you can somewhat do it with a bunch of builds/profs. When multiple defensive boons (protection, aegis, etc) + AoE healing fields come together, it can result in a LOT of overall healing + damage reduction for all nearby allies. However it requires coordination and not just 1 dedicated healer facerolling his keyboard with all healing abilities lol, like how WoW healers used to play whack-a-mole with raid frames.

Neither format is perfect, both have their strengths and weaknesses and it’s up to the player (you) to decide what you want out of your MMO.

For me the disadvantages of having dedicated healers are too many. If all my years of WoW taught me anything (raided Tier 6 – Tier 13) it’s that balancing around dedicated healers means they become an absolute necessity for every group, otherwise everyone dies to all the unavoidable damage flying around. However if you tone-down all that incoming damage to lessen the need for a healer, then the presence of a healer would make all content a laughing joke to beat. It’s either one extreme or the other.
Then there’s the issue of PvP balance (2v2/3v3 from S3 – S10, 100K+ lifetime kills). GW2 is very AoE-based which helps things a lot, but you will still end up with a dire situation in your typical 5v5 match where the team with 1-2 healers is going to have an huge advantage over the team which has no healers.
Since this is conquest gameplay, healers will become incredibly powerful for holding points. For the majority of WoW’s lifetime Warriors were known to be terrible without pocket-healers, but WITH a pocket healer they become absurdly powerful (borderline unstoppable). Again, it was either one extreme or the other.
There are many more I could list, like healers needing the ability to sustain themselves + other people or suffer having no role.

I much rather prefer GW2’s system of having a large variety of roles and builds available to every class, resulting in them being either bunkers (tank + self-healing), team support (AoE boons + heals), control (cc/lock-down), direct damage (glass cannons) or condition damage (moar DoTs), or some combination of those. Dedicated healers simply have no place here :P

If people think power-creep-damage is scary now, power-creep-healing is even more difficult to balance.

evilapprentice.6379:

Which is both teams. How can we further narrow down who we think we’ll win?

Oh I know, I’m gonna bet its the team who didn’t have a disadvantage for the first 30-60s of the match. If you think that has no impact on the game, you’re kidding yourself. People are joining solo q for a chance at winning – no sane player is going to willingly handicap their chances before the game even starts for them.

I know you’re a fan of your own suggestion, but it has issues.

Then cut my suggested time-windows down even further. Instead of 30 seconds, if 10 seconds pass after match starts and someone is afk/disconnected, kick them and offer the next 5 people in queue a 10-second window to join + fill the vacant slot.
That means the team will be at a 20 second disadvantage at the most.

The only way to cut the disadvantage further would be to start eating-into the pre-match time. For example, the moment the final 10-second countdown starts (“The match will start soon”, “Last chance to nail down strategy…” etc etc), when the timer hits 0 (match starts) and someone is detected as disconnected/afk then they will be immediately kicked + replaced within the next 10 seconds.
So basically 10 secs into the match the vacant slot would already be filled.

It would be tight but it would work. If you still want to pick at that and say “omg nobody will accept, slightest chance of losing, etc etc” then not much more can be done really.
My goal is to suggest a way to get 5v5’s happening.

evilapprentice.6379:

And No, 30-60 seconds can decide the entire game between matched opponents. Take 2 equally skilled, diversely populated teams – who wins, the team with a 30-60s head start, or the other team?

The team which isn’t 1 player short?

JinDaVikk.7291:

Wintel I have 3k hours on engi kit swapping.

Lies! Heresy!

evilapprentice.6379:

Who’s going to click Accept knowing, for a fact, that the team they’re joining was at a disadvantage for at least 30 seconds?

Any sane player who doesn’t want to keep sitting in queue for another 4-7+ minutes in the queue. I’d certainly do it.

If 5 players are ready to go within 30-60 seconds after the match starts, the match still has a perfectly equal chance to go in ANY direction. This is Solo Queue and skill + coordination are the primary factors. That being said, the main reason 4v5’s are so bad is because of the 3-node conquest gameplay. It’s very difficult for a 4-man team to spread themselves out and hold points while doing objectives like orbs/svanir. The mere presence of the 5th person changes all that.

As long as the 5th player is there and ready to go within the first 1 minute of the match, things will be as good as fair and anyone can win.

The main goal should be to get proper 5v5 matches happening as much as possible. Penalizing deliberate offenders takes lower priority, the most important thing is to NOT ruin the experience for the other 9 players who are ready to go.

Since ArenaNet still haven’t implemented a solution, I can only think that they need more suggestions. Here’s mine:

If 30 seconds have passed after a match officially starts and one of the below situations occurs:
a) Someone is still missing from the scoreboard (disconnected or logged out)
OR
b) Someone hasn’t moved from the spawn point, no activity detected (AFK)

Then the following should happen:

1) The AFK person will be immediately kicked + penalized and returned to Mists, the disconncted/logged-out person will also be returned to the Mists if they reconnect.

2) The next 3-5 people sitting in Solo Queue should get a message: “Vacant slot available, accept within the next 30 seconds to join!”

3) Whichever one of those 3-5 people clicks “Accept” the fastest will join the match (the system can decide who), while the rest will be given a message “Sorry, the slot was filled. You have been placed in the queue.”

The team with missing people is guaranteed to have their slot(s) filled. Mission accomplished, match saved! Nothing too drastic happens in the first 1 minute of the match…at least it will be a fair 5v5 match for the remaining duration which is a hell of a lot better than a 4v5 (or 3v5/2v5 when people start rage-quitting).
For those worried that even 1 minute is too long a disadvantage and people won’t join a team that has been put at disadvantage, it’s just a matter of narrowing-down my suggested time windows:

Instead of 30 seconds, if 10 seconds pass after match starts and someone is detected afk/disconnected, kick them and offer the next 5 people in queue a 10-second window to join + fill the vacant slot. That means the team will be at a 20 second disadvantage at the most.

To cut that time even further, we would have to eat into the pre-match time. For example, when the final 10-second countdown starts (“The match will start soon”, “Last chance to nail down strategy…” etc), when the timer hits 0 (match starts) and someone is detected as disconnected/afk then they will be immediately kicked + replaced within the next 10 seconds.
So basically 10 secs into the match the vacant slot would already be filled.

It would be tight but it would work.

4) In addition to the above , please have a right-click reporting feature to report people who go AFK later in the match, it does happen quite a lot. If 2 or more people report someone as AFK, the offending player should get a message: “You have been reported AFK – please perform any activity within the next 60 seconds”. If they do anything (even a keypress or mouse waggle) then they should be immune to AFK-reports for the remainder of the match. If they do nothing, they will be kicked, penalized and receive no rewards.
The vacant slot should not be kept vacant however, since it’s too long into the match.

What does ArenaNet think, are these good ideas? Would it even be possible to implement?

Until a solution finally arrives, all us players can do is keep making suggestion after suggestion. Experiencing multiple 4v5’s is absolutely infuriating.

edit: Never mind, this probably needs another thread

Eh? My Logitech G400 has survived 1000+ hours of click-spam in first person shooters, Engineer kit swapping is nothing :P

You should be more worried about playing an Elementalist in TPvP with keyboard. The keys risk getting jammed due to the crazy buttons-per-second you have to push, assuming you haven’t already broken the keyboard out of frustration -_-

oZii.2864:

Here goes the never ending cycle of skill and trait comparisons. Ele has to do Y but necromancer doesn’t get A. Wait Necromancer doesn’t get A but it gets B the same as engineer gets B. Though Ele does have Z but Mesmer has R times 2. Guardian’s should pop up next.

It’s not about comparing. It’s about just how clunky and difficult to use Ele skills are in general, that a single weapon from another class with 5 abilities can accomplish what takes an Ele 15-20 abilities.

> Double-layered cooldown system being VERY complicated to use effectively, players face a steep and frustrating learning curve
> Massively telegraphed and slow-animated weapon abilities, a lot of which require enemies to stand perfectly still or require expert positioning + timing
> All survivability tied to Arcana + Water + Cantrip builds, all other builds are prone to dying extremely easily with almost zero room for error

I’m special so I can post multiple flaws with the class :P
But seriously, this class has way too many things wrong with it.

“Jack of all trades” = “Sucks equally at everything”

It all makes sense now!

Taldren.7523:

So the class is supposed to be Diverse … but hit like a truck. Does anyone actually feel that we actually do that?

They do, but only if the enemy doesn’t move. Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, Churning Earth, Fire Grab, etc are some of the hardest-hitting abilities in the game. Hell even staff with Lava Font + Meteor Shower can do an insane level of damage.

The only problem is that landing any the above skills require the enemy to either be AFK or completely locked-down with CC’s. Whatever few CC’s Ele’s have are separated by attunement cooldowns along with long cooldowns of their own, not to mention it’s quite easy to miss with them if you have the slightest amount of lag or the enemy is moving too fast.

Even while leveling-up my Ele I noticed something very strange….tons of abilities that require the target to stand still, but no go-to abilities to actually hold that target in place.

For giggles, lets see what Engineers can do with just Rifle alone:
> Rifle1: Hard-hitting guided autoattack (1000 range)
> Rifle2: 2 second Immobilize (10sec CD, 1000 range)
> Rifle3: AoE cone blast + bleed (0sec CD, 400 range)
> Rifle4: Massive knockback + immob/cripple/chill cleanse (10sec CD, 400 range)
> Rifle5: Big-damage leap AoE (20sec CD, 700 range)
…and Firearms traits for 20% cooldown reduction, 20% range increase and 10% damage increase for all the above.

Look at that versatility and kiting ability all coming from 1 weapon, along with big damage, control and mobility.

When I started playing Engineer I felt that just the Rifle was more effective at kiting+killing than the entire Elementalist class. That feeling has slowly gone away as I learned how to play Ele better, but the fact remains that you have to do a ridiculous amount of WORK just to accomplish very simple tasks all the while being super-squishy and having zero room for error. How absurd.

’Tis a little late, but I guess my asura can apply…name is “Yay” on Crystal Desert.

As she leveled up I’ve taken quite a few screenies of her. I just can’t get enough of those expressions during waving, dancing and laughing <3

Phadde.7362:

Think you’re exaggerating. Evasive Arcana is indeed amazing, but it does not mean that every build would benefit from taking it. I think they did it the right way, but I would love to see some more interesting GM traits elsewhere.

Every build benefits from Evasive Arcana it because WITHOUT it Ele survivability is miserable and cooldowns between attunements are too long. Even the reduction from 16 sec to 13 sec baseline is like trying to put a bandaid on a chopped-off leg.

Introducing defensive traits in Earth is pointless because the main gain of that tree (condi/bleed damage) is hardly relevant to Ele’s primary form of dealing damage. Ele simply can’t stay alive long enough or put out CC in order to get the most out of condi builds, unlike Necro/Engineer.

Fire, Air and Earth can be brimming with awesome traits but none of it matters because any Ele build that doesn’t go 30 Arcana + 20 Water = risks getting blown-up in literally 2 seconds by incoming burst damage while stuck in any CC.
Meanwhile Thieves can simply run the hell away with stealth and Mesmers can teleport/invis + distract with clones, Ele has absolutely nothing to peel enemies off themselves, except for – wait for it – Cantrips. Something which all Ele’s are forced to run anyway, all other slot skills might as well not exist. To get the cooldown reduction on Cantrips, they need to go into Water to take Cantrip Mastery. Do you see the loop they’re stuck in?

I only pvp with my asura engnieer, some people say she’s kinda cute. Name is “Yay”.

Probably my Asura engi. Name is “Yay”, some people have said she looks kinda cute :P

Since ANet wants bullet points:
> Ele’s will not sacrifice crucial Arcana and Water traits to venture into other trees as long as their survivability is kept as low as it is. IT’S THAT SIMPLE.

Paradoxically, Elemental Attumenent got moved deeper into Arcana and Cleansing Wave got moved deeper into water. Now Ele’s are REALLY locked into 30 arcane + 20 water to survive, perfect.

I hadn’t played GW1, so GW2 was my first time experiencing the unique combat style (finally quitting WoW, yay). I picked the very fist class that resembled my WoW Mage, an Elementalist, assuming the two classes would be similar – squishy against melee but equipped with a solid set of kiting tools, strong solo capability, ways to absorb/avoid damage, etc. Oh boy was I wrong.

Lets just say that I think I spent my first ~5-10 hours in this game in downed state more than being alive. The class is incredibly difficult to play compared to all other classes. No fancy distractions like mesmer clones, no handy escape tools like thief stealth, no guardian/warrior style face-tanking, no kiting tools compared to what engineers/rangers have.
Just mashing the hell out of dodge as much as possible and backpeddling away from enemies in order to avoid getting crushed. If I pulled multiple enemies then hit Air > Ride The Lightning the hell out of there. Cry a lot if it’s on cooldown.

Things became far easier as I hit 80 and let gear-scaling put me far out of reach of most world mobs, but I don’t think I will be leveling another Ele. What an unforgiving and punishing class to play, with no reward in sight for all this button-mashing.