Guild Wars 2

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

If you’re not going to help out with DPS you shouldn’t be getting rewards. I think that’s fair.

But your are wrong.

By healing people and providing support you are allowing them to focus more on DPS rather than sustaining themselves. This way players get work on what they are specialized in: healing or dps. This brings efficiency because the comparative advantage of each specialisation is being used to its fullest.

It is called teamwork.

Think more is grammar the question,

Rewards?

So you came back into your ele to play … dead ?

The best EU guild (rT) – the best guild in the world – is on Desolation for the most part.

:p

Q4: depends upon a number of factors. Could you elaborate?

Also check this post of mine:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-D-F-PvE-Guide/page/4#post3091832

There is nothing to think, there is maths, and the Zalculator.

The Zalculator is my rather-user-friendly DPS calculator:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-D-F-PvE-Guide/first#post2333478
(Chapter 9 of my guide)
This tool will allow you to optimise you traits, your gear, and your skill rotation.

Let me know if you need any help

Remember fotm level 80?

This is skill.

Wanna hear a funny story? The title is Lingering Elements.
Don’t laugh yet, wait, it’s worth reading.

The story takes place a few month before the last “big” balance patch.

Since the release of the game the developers had been messing around with the Lingering Elements trait, nerfing it, breaking it, fixing it, rebreaking it … it simply never work as described, it never worked as the devs admitted it to work, it was just broken and close to useless. Yet, this trait is placed in what used to be a compulsory trait line. In that line is also located Arcane Precision, an other broken trait. Both are minor traits, so no way to pick something less broken and more useful instead.

For many months we reported these issues to the developers and nothing happened. They kept claiming to have “fixed” Lingering Elements, repeatedly, but this was not true. This is why the elementalist community decided that enough was enough. We started a thread in which we intensively called for Anet’s attention. The thread has been heavily moderated and we all got many infraction points in this struggle. But this was a just cause.

Many many times I made suggestions to improve this trait. I believe my most sensible suggestion was to make the mechanic of Lingering Elements natural to the class: all attunement bonuses would linger for a brief time after swapping out. When I mean all bonuses I really mean all, not just the adept minors like it is now. Then I suggested that the Lingering Elements trait could simply extend the lingering duration. So this would mean that all build would be able to use attunement specific bonuses like Piercing shards in other attunements, to some extent. I felt this would be a good suggestion because it would allow us to play with the elements. It would feel right for an ele.

Finally the devs cared for us a little bit. The 10/12 patch arrived. In the patch discussion thread we started an interesting conversation with Jon Peters about lingering elements. You can find the beginning of the discussion here. Needless to say I was not the only one utterly shocked by the way this conversation went. Let me give you a little abstract of what we learned from the devs in that occasion:
- They had never read any of our very numerous suggestion and discussion threads on the topic.
- They couldn’t even do basic maths: we have 70 trait points to allocate, which means we can not reach a 50% damage bonus from attunement specific damage modifiers. Never! At best we can do 40%, if the target has vulnerability.
- They said that the stacking of damage modifiers would be overpowered. However this is exactly what we do in PvE. Is the ele overpowered in PvE? Well that’s a good question, but the point is that the devs have no clue about what is going on in PvE.
- They failed to understand that stacking damage modifiers by swapping attunements comes at a huge cost: to stack three attuements’ modifiers you need to swap twice, the swapping cooldown is 1.65s, so that’s 3.3s wasted on just swapping, which allows you to use the stacked modifiers for 5 – 3.3 = 1.7 seconds at best !!! And this would work only every 13s (attunement cooldown). So we could do this famous “massive damage in a single attack” that manifesto promised us, at the expense of a bad spec, 2 attunement cooldown, with obvious telegraph (swapping) and long cooldown.

“Overpowered” they said.

Edit: they also admitted that our adept minor traits need work. Still waiting.
Edit2: for extra fun, look at the tooltip for lingering elements in-game
Oh and since I am delivering personal messages, I might as well add: Jon we told you that Ember’s might (+25% burn duration) would not be used. Maybe it is time you start listening to the people who actually play the class. With all due respect.

Scholars beat them all.

If you are interested in maths and optimisation, take a look at my calculator:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-D-F-PvE-Guide/first#post2333478
(chapter 9 of my guide)

J Eberle.9312:

CC Danicia.1394:

Zelyhn.8069:

Hey Danicia, since you are so nice to care about the well being of our discussions here in this sub-forum, could you try to include in your daily report to ask the devs to give us a bit of attention?

This is absolutely doable.

So how’s this going? :P

She said it is doable, she didn’t say that she would do it.

You know how to doge? Now learn to anet.

Gendarran fields
Lornar’s pass
Bloodtide coast

The zones the have been most affected by scarlet are situated to the nort, east, and south of LA.

Could it be that something is going to happen to the west?

Maybe Scarlet’s misdeeds could bother the Tengus into breaking out of their isolation. Maybe this could coincide with the release of GW2 in China.

Sanderinoa.8065:

lol I really did write TD;DR xD crap, quickly, think of something, oh right, too dull, didn’t read, nice one

Yeah very nice. So that’s how you thank me for dying three time for you so you can test weird stuff in Arah?

A fifth element?

maxinion.8396:

Zelhyn’s sticky above also answers this (advanced guide for pve).

Haha you are an angel

Sanderinoa.8065:

I shot a man but my friends said it was ok, and the government hasnt given me an official statement yet, its probably legal.

no, this is not ‘legal’ or well, not intended, the jade maw is immune to normal attacks, and Arenanet just forgot to take combo fields in consideration. There has, however not been an official statement as the dungeon forums are rarely visited by devs, and this exploit doesn’t get mentioned very regularly. Apologies if I come over more offensively than is professional.

But Sandy, actually now we have many devs visiting the dungeon sub-forum because Mighty Danicia asked them to do so! Or did she say she could ask them? Ah, I always get lost with Anet’s rhetoric.

Anyway in an other thread they said that stacking FGS’s fire field is not an exploit since it is “intended by design”. So… what is intended by design and what is not? I guess we have no way to know until they post about it.

Here’s the thing. There are many actions (both in-game and on the forums) that the devs consider illegal, but they will not tell you about it. Yes you read me right. In the agreements that everybody checked and read they mention that they can terminate your account for what ever reasons they see fit, without having to disclose them.

Boom, that’s the power of law my friends! Or is it the spirit of the law ? Ah, I’m confused again. Hopefully Danicia can clear this up for us: she’s our moderagod after all.

Luckily the developed states in which we live generally have a less interpretative approach to the law than Anet. This is why if say your name was something like Dalon and you were to get banned for a reason not mentioned anywhere then you should be able to ask for a refund. Or make a big mess publicly. Just saying.

In theory you should know what is an exploit and what is not. But in practice you can not. The reason for this is that Anet does not know either. Anet’s opinons are usually as enduring as living world content and they have profaned everything they wrote in their manifesto.

Note to mods: I am just stating the facts; please do not interpret anything I wrote as an insult to Anet’s staff. Edit: I am genuinely puzzled!

J Eberle.9312:

Hey guys, what are the pros and cons of sigil of speed in dungeons?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Speed

Please remain on topic.

This OP contains a LINK!!

Move it to linksville.

The existence of this item summoning a Mini Developer is blatantly a bug.

The end game content can be found in the fractals.

Or could.

They butchered fractals.

I have noticed there are many new elementalist players coming on these forums. I have been asked many times what is the best build for our class. My answer is that there is no clear picture. Read the introduction of my guide: the most important and most variable factor is your play-style.

Do not simply copy builds to fit the “meta”. This is the worse mistake you can do.
Instead you should get inspired by published build and experiment with all of them on your own. I like to emphasise the importance of personal experience. If you only follow what you are told to be the best practice then you will never improve.

There are a number of builds that are adaptable enough to be efficient with many setups and different weapons. If you are a new player then you should consider using one of those.

However I must make one essential warning: most high-end elementalist builds are very “glassy”. They are designed to fit the play-style of experienced players who know how to avoid taking damage relying mostly on dodges and group-play. If you are a new player you may find them hardly viable in practice. Using a stronger build will not likely make you a better player. In fact the best way to learn this game is to play with sub-optimal PuGs !

On the topic of adaptable builds, here are a few things I would like to point out about the 30/30/x/0/x build I use:

• It allows for an optimal use of staff. The little fall in optimal damage you can notice due to not taking as many damage modifiers as the usual 30/20/10/10/0 build is vastly compensated by its ability to output constant damage in varied situations. Note that I do not advocate the use of the staff (at least until Anet decides to rework its air attunement).

• It is easily the best build for underwater combat. This is because our optimal underwater combat style is close to that of the daggers. And because the build I advocate is thoroughly though through :p
  I will provide DPS figures and optimal rotations for our underwater potential as soon as our skill data is complete.

• It is a very powerful build to use the Lightning Hammer on single targets. In fact it deals more damage than the “meta” 30/10/10/20/0.

And this is just a glimpse of the possibilities!

CM snipers beg to differ

Race to 50??

You mean the crafting race? Ah the good times spent on the TP !

Fractal reset + ascended armor + scripted agony + AR infusions buyable on TP = bad implementation and they should feel bad.

Edit: forgot about no weapon chest = more bad, and non-existent rewards = VERY bad.

Edit2: I forgot about dredge! Bad bad bad. Also they lied = bad.

And for staying silent despite all the badness:
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD

Hey Danicia, since you are so nice to care about the well being of our discussions here in this sub-forum, could you try to include in your daily report to ask the devs to give us a bit of attention?

In the ele forum someone asked for a red circle to visualise Meteor Storm’s aoe and a dev replied on the same day. The next day we learned that the absence of red circle was a blatant bug present in the game since its release and that this would be bugfixed promptly.

Obviously there are many many blatant bugs in dungeons. Therefore we need this kind of interaction here even more than in the ele forum.

The dungeon community is aware of your great powers and we trust you with the great responsibility to assist us in our most dire time of need.

Could you please be so kind to do this for us?

( Then I would feel really really lucky )

Topic-proof note: this message is about dungeons in general. No trees, butterflies, rabbits, or moderators were harmed in its making.

LordByron.8369:

Only tip:
play with a guardian.

Bad tip.
Better tip: do not play with guardians, as much as possible.

The reason for this is that guardians trivialise many encounters. Therefore you hardly spot your mistakes and you never improve. The day that you have to face difficult content or guardians are not here to hold your hand then you will fail.

Dual.8953:

@Zelyhn: I do know a few guildies that love thier Rangers to death, but begrudgingly shelve them when doing dungeons so you can tell me if they’re playing how they want.

So you mean that they choose not to play ranger because they have a higher priority goal of being able to run dungeons with your guild. Running dungeons is what they want more than anything.

They could play ranger if they wanted but they decided not to do so.

It sounds like in the end they get what they want!

Does anyone actually play the way they don’t want?

so meta
very definition
much interesting

Well it is pretty simple, trust the tooltip!

It says that attunements will linger for 5 seconds after you swap out of them.
And then it explains what each attunement does:
Fire – you can cast fire spells
Water – you can cast water spells
Etc.
So basically what this trait does is that, for example, if you were to swap from fire to water, then you would benefit from both of these attunements for 5 seconds. This means that for these five seconds you will be able to cast Fire and Water spells both at the same time!

Trust me, we have been discussing this awesome trait with the developers since game release. They have reworked it a number of times at it has been BUG FIXED many many many times.

Discussion exhibit number 1
Discussion exhibit number 2

So if you TRUST THE TOOLTIPS and believe what the developers say then this trait is working perfectly.

It’s a matter of good faith, really.

You should try a Dagger/Focus build. This weapon set-up has tremendous possibilities. It is also one of the most efficient for all aspects of PvE.

We have two guides for you:
DeKeys’ practical approach:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/first#post3436706

My more philosophical approach:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-D-F-PvE-Guide/first

Enjoy!

Oh man if that signet is real this is going to be godly for my beloved DF fresh air build in PvE !!

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

xsquared.1926:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnPui3MAx8Q

Ele damage is king.

My warrior does 40k with one HB, that ele was only hitting 10k at most.

How is ele damage king when warrior literally does 4x more DPS?

So you are back!

Ice storm from the Ice Bow is better than the Glyph of Storms cast in Air, much better.

Blasting staff does increase the damage potential of Meteor Shower, but this increase comes at a cost and it is depending upon the size of the target. For a human-sized target (radius 45) the increase is 54%, while for much larger targets (radius 180) the increase is 28%. This is just an example, I do not know the radius of the tree.

Persisting Flames increases the number of total ticks from Lava Font not by 1 but by 2.

You put “guard” and “hard to play” in the same sentence, your argument is invalid.

One class to rule them all

“an expansion worth of content” ?

I’ve heard that before …

Wethospu.6437:

Anet invented GW2 though. Or at least I hope so.

But is the Anet developing GW2 now the same as the Anet that invented GW2 then?

I’m afraid you are mistaken Weth: conjured weapons do have a varying weapon strength.
I think what Richo meant is that the weapon strength of conjures is independent of your equipped weapons. I don’t see how that helps for the research we are trying to do though.

Summoning consumables are a blatant bug.

That’s such a cool idea! This would bring my 10k HP & 1k8 armor elementalist to around 6k HP & 1k4 armor, which is awesome!

And then a critter with retaliation can get me killed.

Seriously, there is no problem with berserker gear in itself. The issue is with mob design. The devs are nerfing zerker only because they do not have the resources to redesign mobs.

Why do they not have the resources you ask? Because NCSoft.

Why does NCSoft not give Anet more resources to fix mobs AI ? Because this problem affects dungeon runners only. And dungeon runners don’t buy gems. It is better to focus more on the problems of the players who bring money.

You get the idea?

Berserker gear is being nerfed only because berserker users buy less gems than WvWers or World-PvEers.

And that, my friends, is the beauty of micro-transactions.

Elementalists: I’m alive !! … wait no, not anymore.

Maxinion I like how you keep not mentionning D/F or my guide everywhere you mention other’s

Nothing personal, it’s just funny.

This is a bit old, but it may help:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Build-Analysis/first

I’d be glad to see more testing on this!

Also, a while back Wethospu found that potions are not working the way we think they work.

Such a shame, people leveling up without experimenting …

There is no “best” weapon set, but there is a worse one: staff. It is simply underpowered in many aspect, at least until Anet buffs its air attacks.

Anyway you really should check DeKeys’ guide, her work is the reference for PvE elementalists.

Then we understand each other Impact
On the subject of calculations, we get different results only because we are using different inputs. Check the calculator linked once more: I have modified some attunement modifiers that you inputted for DF to reflect how my calculator would use them. Basically attunement modifiers are not considered active until you input the attunement change. Then I have compared the results between your modified calculations and mine. There is a 0.317 DPS difference. This is a 0.0022% change. I think we can call this equal.
Just so you know, I use values that I entitle as “uptimes” for attunements but this is only to look simpler. In fact I work with weighted averages. As you can see it is accurate.
My method also provides additional information since users get to know how important is each attunement.

Haviz I couldn’t agree more. This is also why I hate this idea of a “meta”. I believe people should learn to adapt and use the best build for the content they choose to tackle with the group they have. And the only way to do this is by experimenting. It is all about the mindset.
Also, playing with guardians is boring!

No it does not. Check my maths, it is correct. I think the experiment we’ve been through shows this well enough.

So you wrote down an incorrect rotation, that was my point from the start.

As for your thoughts on the optimal rotation, if you were to use all attunements in each phase then you would not be able to blast the fire field. Besides I never talked about maximising DPS. Instead I focus on in-game viability. This is why the practical aspect of a rotation is important to me: if a rotation requires too much attention or it is too sensitive to unexpected changes (such as dodges) then I don’t publish it. Now, if you know a way to achieve more with this kind of rotation then I’d be glad to hear about it! Obviously we ended up discussing it, so maybe we should switch to a more appropriate thread as I suggested before?

I use the undestructible golem.

As I said, your rotation is not technically doable and it is also practically difficult.
This is why we always realise rotations in-game before computing anything.

Don’t worry I got that the first time. Although I found some mistakes such as Magnetic Wave being cast in air and a time constraint breach (There is a minimum time limit of 26s) though.

It seems to me that you would be too short on time for FA between the second Burning Speed and Comet, so you are missing a LW somewhere.

Have you tried doing this entire rotation in the mists? can you do it consistently? I find it very difficult to pull out in practice.

Sanderinoa setting the standards for thieves in fractals

Epic as hell, good job!

Let’s not generalize about LH: it is really this utility that can achieve the highest DPS possible. I was really just comparing DF (30/30/10) and SFLH (30/10/10/20) to show that DF comes on top, but this does not mean the LH is not good.

About the rotation: technically it is not possible to realise it as you inputted it in my calculator because of fresh air cooldown. I am interested in what you have to say about it, but this is off topic here. Could we discuss this in the DF thread?