Guild Wars 2

Learn your skills till they’re instinct. Then do some 1v1s and learn/watch the key skills that you need to dodge. Most people don’t know how to dodge well so that’s not really unusual.

Try to play so that you never dodge at random except as a reflex dodge (or evasive arcana of course).

For EA, whenever you find yourself dodging naturally, switch to whatever attunement you’ll need mid-dodge for the effect. Usually this will only be water.

10/10 build. The fact that you can pop all your glyphs including heal and instantly get 8 stacks of might is just too much to handle.

Edit: I’m surprised how few people are getting this…

As mentioned, would not work due to combo fields. It would also be bad for balance and mostly just bad for skill lag.

Terrible idea all around.

Nokaru.7831:

Zephyrus.9680:

Full of conspiracies. I’ve seen several matching guild tags from different sides in WvW and usually they’re just friends dueling.

Except you can duel in the Obsidian Sanctum where it has no impact on PPT.

Or you can duel out of the OS where it has no impact on PPT.

I saw some tags from Dragonbrand on Maguuma twice so far this week. Each time they were just dueling their server mates. There’s no rule against cross-server guild tags and w/e they’re doing is their business. Reporting it is just stupid.

If they wanted to exploit they wouldn’t be repping the same guild. The bigger question is who actually cares about PPT enough to waste time on a stupid “exploit” like that anyway?

Necros are consistently one of the most difficult classes I face in PvP and are all over in the top 500 which is probably not applicable to the OP anyway.

One isn’t really better than the other. All I can say is try both of them in PvP, if PvP is any concern. They are almost opposite styles in some ways.

This is probably the most boring suggestion I’ve ever seen for an elementalist and completely against the whole concept of the class.

If you don’t want to have to switch between 4 attunements to get kitten done there are 7 other classes that fit that style. Some of us do enjoy playing with all 20 skills all the time.

Argon.2405:

I was informed by support to post this here:

Farming your own guild cross-server for bloodlust stomp kills.

Thoughts?

Full of conspiracies. I’ve seen several matching guild tags from different sides in WvW and usually they’re just friends dueling.

If they were farming for stomps, first the whole concept is a terrible way to “farm” and second, they wouldn’t be doing it way out in the field like that screenshot. It would be in some secluded area near citadel or spawns.

I was also killed trying to cap the ruins after a friendly from the same guild (mesmer) shadowed me around until 2 Invaders jumped me.

How can you honestly believe this? You’re saying they have an elaborate cross-server 3 man setup including a spy in your guild to gank unsuspecting solo players?… If someone went though that much trouble to gank solo players they deserve your badges!

I don’t know what you mean by untargeted abilities can’t hit a thief. If you’re not dodging you should be hitting a thief whenever they’re approaching to attempt a backstab. If backstabs are landing, don’t use keyboard turning and increase your mouse rotation sensitivity.

Basically the easiest way is to hit them with one of the many available CCs after shadowstep is burned (Earth 3, earth 4, air 3 or air 5). Then follow with burning + fire 5 or just fire 3 or any type of big damage.

After they’re at half health they have to go into defensive mode which means popping big cooldowns or doing no damage. After they pop big cooldowns they’re dead next time they get low.

As long as you’re reasonably good at anticipation and dodges you can stay ahead because thief is extremely squishy and has far lower healing than ele.

That’s assuming a not glass D/D ele.

Or you can go full zerk S/D with Arcane Shield for cheese mode.

Sig for small scale/roaming where its sustain matters. ER for medium scale where chill/cripple/immobilize = death.

Staff (ER/Arcane Brilliance) for very large scale where D/D would just have to give up too much damage to make the survivability workable.

Wintel.4873:

D/D + 0/0/2/6/6 + Cantrips + Celestial bunker is your one and only answer. Ele “defense” revolves around that 1 build.

Every other Ele build continues to suffer from the same massive issues in SPvP it has been having over the last year or so.

The latest patch was pretty much a D/D patch.

Zephyrus.9680:

And if you’re trying to claim damage mitigation should be improved or cooldowns reduced, I would also have to disagree. That would sort of go against the theme of the elementalist class as very mobile, high damage, but low actual mitigation. If you want high mitigation, lower mobility and lower damage/AoE damage, you can’t go wrong with guardian.

How about a very mobile, high damage AND high mitigation/avoidance class? Thief and Warrior.

“[thief and warrior] do a better job than what Ele’s do and are vastly easier to play”
You’re comparing apples to oranges, to strawberries.

Warrior can choose either damage or survival, hardly both and they’re not good AoE except hambow I guess… They still seem to consistently lose to D/D in 1v1, even sometimes staff. Thief is just a 1v1/gank class and inline for a buff somewhere IMO. Is stealth really damage mitigation vs ele?

I agree the latest patch is a D/D patch in terms of where the buffs happened. But regarding “the One” build, I’m at over 100 games with a custom 4/0/0/4/6 build at 76:35 win/loss in soloQ. That’s over 2:1 ratio. It was actually over 3:1 at the mid point before the matchmaking caught up. That doesn’t really happen with a subpar build. Just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s the only good option.

I do agree eles are in a very restricted place in terms of builds, traits, and utilities. Their viability also seems very reliant on the new rune of strength which is not an ideal way to go about balancing a class… So yes there are issues with this precarious way Anet choose to balance things. Particularly when it seems likely (to me) that rune of strength will receive a nerf sooner or later.

But I’m just not seeing how as a blanket claim that damage mitigation is an issue, considering the above average sustain, dodge (vigor), and mobility options available to ele.

Elementalists can’t change weapon sets so I agree with the above comments that it doesn’t make sense to talk about X, Y, and Z skills from different sets.

By “THE ONE” build do you mean 0 2 0 6 6? Then you would have to consider the teamplay aspect as well. Same with staff in general. I really hope you’re not considering staff balance in a 1v1 context because that’s not why it’s used.

If you want to talk about balance, pick a weapon set first. Please. Or we could go in meaningless circles for days. I would agree, for example, that S/x needs more CC/control skills, but not damage mitigation.

But in short, if you’re trying to claim eles are still underpowered post-patch, I would have to disagree. Though the build and gear choices are still too limited.

And if you’re trying to claim damage mitigation should be improved or cooldowns reduced, I would also have to disagree. That would sort of go against the theme of the elementalist class as very mobile, high damage, but low actual mitigation. If you want high mitigation, lower mobility and lower damage/AoE damage, you can’t go wrong with guardian.

Dragon’s tooth should be remade to be ground targeted. As is, it’s just a blast finisher for PvP, there’s no other use. Scepter water #2 should also be remade to do something… anything. Then scepter might see more use in PvP.

Swim.6830:

I am just trying to bring this into discussion due to the below points:
- other classes can heal just as well if not better and sometimes passively
- we are one of the classes with lowest HP together with Thief and Guardian (both of which are in a very good spot and are well balanced)
- depending on the weapon, we have some of the slowest and most choreographed attacks in the game which makes it easy for opponents to dodge almost anything we do
- we are a boon dependent class for our defense, but currently a lot of classes can mitigate this easily (PvP)
- we do not have an abundance of controlling conditions and CC to keep opponents at bay like other classes can (I am gonna throw our pets here too)

Feel free to flame me too, I am completely open to discussion and I might just suck completely, tho I have mained Ele since beta and currently.

I’m not sure how you can make some of these claims when ele has a massive amount of CC and control, some of the best all around healing, and great mobility.

Yes in exchange, ele lacks direct mitigation but if you wanted to tank any type of focused damage, wouldn’t you be a guardian or warrior? Given the points raised, I think you’ve been playing the wrong class all this time.

From what I understand, weapon strength is independent from Power, following this formula:

Damage = Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient / Armor

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation

That means it’s equally affected by power and critical hits so can be ruled out as a factor here. If it were added as flat power it would be close in most cases (precision would actually be better because procs) but since it’s not, Power is seems always superior for damage no matter how sets are combined. The fact that critical damage (ferocity) was nerfed so hard makes it an even bigger difference and also seems to rule out Cavalier’s set as ever being worth using over knights.

LordByron.8369:

Its not right to say power is simply stronger than ferocity or precision

You might want to read this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1li5q3/breakeven_points_of_power_vs_precision_mathtable/

Since is based on prepatch remember to add 1050 to power (weapon) and subtract 100 from crit damage (base damage).

Are you saying the weapon adds 1050 power that’s not reflected on the attributes page?

The only time I would drop windborne dagger on D/D is with zephyr’s boon. Then again… Zephyr’s boon is part of the most common D/D build.

nearlight.3064:

Zephyrus.9680:

Mix celestial with any primary power stat gear and you should be good. Zerker if you want more damage or soldiers if you want more bunker. Maybe even zealots could be a consideration.

The way GW2 stats work, defense is optimized with balanced stats which makes celestial an ideal defensive set for ele but offense is not at all ideal. Precision and ferocity both rely on high power to be valuable and celestial lacks this which means your offense is not ideal. If you’re using a lot of celestial, you need everything else to be focused on power in some way if you’re intending to do any reasonable damage.

Knights is not a bad choice if the toughness is specifically something you find lacking but overall power is the most important single stat. I find ele to be more susceptible to burst damage than sustained which means vitality is not significantly worse than toughness. If that’s the case, than mixing some soldiers + zerker pieces should always be better than the knights alternative because it results in higher power with otherwise the same emphasis on survivability.

Again, this is only relevant when considering mixing celestial in your gear, which is a great set that works out fantastic for ele but can lead to a severe lack of power if mixed wrong.

Thanks for the input. Could you provide numbers for power, armor, HP ferocity, and healing power, and crit chance that are good to aim for so I can select which pieces I want to be each type of gear?

It depends on context so you just need to keep in mind how the stats relate. Basically my armor is split about 50/50 zerker/celestial. Then I have full sets of both celestial and zerker trinkets.

For staff (zerg/small group) I’ll go mostly or full zerk trinkets but depends again on what we’re facing and how the group is working. For D/D (small group/solo) I’ll go mostly celestial trinkets. My D/D relies on high might stacks or else damage would be suffering a lot but as is, would probably be more consistent with a couple soldier pieces over celestial which I haven’t gotten yet.

It seems everyone is looking for a perfect build but there’s no perfect set of numbers that would be meaningful for even the smallest differences in a situation. That’s why you should first think about stats in a relative sense and then think about how much defense and offense you need based on how you play and what you’re playing.

Ferocity and precision are relative to each other and to power. Power is the single most important stat that’s not dependent on anything else. With the ferocity nerf, power has become even more important so there’s basically no case where precision or ferocity are better than power but at the same time with the crit proc sigil buffs, precision is also important if you rely on crit procs.

The effectiveness of armor and HP are relative to each other for ‘effective-HP’ but they each have different strengths.

Since offense stat groups and defensive stat groups are unrelated, there’s no ‘perfect’ setup. You need enough EHP to not die from a gust of wind and enough damage to be doing something of value. That comes down to weapon set, traits, skill build, and play style more than math. IMO. Come up with a general mix and then have a few pieces you can switch in and out as needed.

Mix celestial with any primary power stat gear and you should be good. Zerker if you want more damage or soldiers if you want more bunker. Maybe even zealots could be a consideration.

The way GW2 stats work, defense is optimized with balanced stats which makes celestial an ideal defensive set for ele but offense is not at all ideal. Precision and ferocity both rely on high power to be valuable and celestial lacks this which means your offense is not ideal. If you’re using a lot of celestial, you need everything else to be focused on power in some way if you’re intending to do any reasonable damage.

Knights is not a bad choice if the toughness is specifically something you find lacking but overall power is the most important single stat. I find ele to be more susceptible to burst damage than sustained which means vitality is not significantly worse than toughness. If that’s the case, than mixing some soldiers + zerker pieces should always be better than the knights alternative because it results in higher power with otherwise the same emphasis on survivability.

Again, this is only relevant when considering mixing celestial in your gear, which is a great set that works out fantastic for ele but can lead to a severe lack of power if mixed wrong.

For staff WvW:

Heal: Either arcane brilliance (team option) or ether renewal (condition clear/self-suffient option). No other heal even comes close. Arcane brilliance is pretty close to a full heal if you use it in your water field.

Blasting staff: better heals, better AoE, better CCs. Most important staff trait. I can’t imagine what kind zergs you fight if this doesn’t affect you since in t2 groups are always moving and often spread out. You put skills ahead of where the group is going and more radius = more hits.

Meteor Shower has an almost unlimited AoE cap and blasting staff lets you take down ACs or siege on walls that no one else can reach. Static field has unlimited AoE cap, so bigger radius = more targets. Water fields with basting staff is huge. These are the three main skills that make a staff ele so without blasting staff you’re almost half an ele.

I use a similar build to Mattmatt but with 10/30/0/0/30. Lightning rod for the grandmaster trait and the 10 in fire with burning precision.

I would probably go with brilliance or renewal. Almost always brilliance on staff. Sig works great on D/D or non-zerker builds.

Here’s some duels from around half a year ago using almost full zerker S/D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1iPFA7NfoU

There’s a lot of things I would do differently now but maybe it will help.

“Match manipulation” is a meaningless blanket term so this thread is pointless unless you want to explain where you think it’s occurring. What you’re quoting from GW1 is actually exploiting. 2v1 in a 3 sided game is certainly not it. So I’m curious how anything could be called “match manipulation” in WvW except maybe intentionally trying to tank your server.

Very happy with the attunement system as is. I never use conjures though, I think that could use some type of redesign.

The skill itself is completely fine. It can give eles a hard time but in general I’ve rarely had problems with thieves.

Graendall.4765:

Kill Phantasmal Duelist asap.The rest will go down with aoe.Berserker is very easy to dodge.He will eventualy die from aoes aswell.

About necros…focus the necro.You have to stick on him,never let him freecast.The further away you are from him the most likely it is for you to lose.

Agreed with this. Some phantasms are high priority to kill but most clones can be left to AoE or ignored.

Necro minions are way to strong and low damage to waste time on.

The HP of engi turrets seem to greatly depend on the build they’re running but in general, really annoying.

20/30/0/20/0 cantrip centered build is what I had the most success with.

But all my S/D builds had consistent trouble against any any decent heavies (warriors/guardians) with reasonable damage and defense. I’ve played a lot of S/D and experimented with a number of good setups that at least work in teams but couldn’t really overcome the inherent lack of defensive skills that both D/D and staff have on their sets. This makes heavies much more difficult for S/D, while thieves and squishy classes/builds are often much easier.

EA is what makes ele as fun and complicated as it is. It’s like its own little set of utility skills on their own cooldown. I tried some more damage oriented S/D and staff builds without EA and they were still reasonably effective but just felt boring to play…

I would recommend celestial for D/D and Zerker for S/D. Either one for staff.

The only change I would want to see in windborne dagger is to give it the full effect with single dagger sets.

I’ve tried every weapon set in s/tpvp and staff is definitely the hardest one for me. Even though it’s the one I have the most hours on by far (from WvW). With D/D I’m still getting over 2-1 win/loss ratio in top 1k soloQ but my staff just can’t play at that level.

In terms of the combos you have to pull off and improvise on the spot with staff, D/D seems 1 dimensional because it’s always clear what to do next with the skills you have on cooldown. Where D/D is more about simple rotations, staff is all about combos (cc+AoE and combo fields).

Creamble.1652:

Magnetic Grasp is a very important skill in the elementalist’s fold.

That’s basically all that needs to be said. There’s no compelling reason at all to boost it’s damage.

Eles aren’t squishy.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

Basic staff-combo guide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDX7lo1xtak

Very nice staff combo guide. Staff is the only weapon set I haven’t used in PvP so I’ll definitely be looking into those combos once I get to it.

sminkiottone.6972:

Zephyrus.9680:

Before making ridiculous suggestions I would recommend the OP join a fight club or come to obsidian sanctum to fight more skilled players. Or check in on sPvP where thief is one of the weaker classes now.

Lol, you know thief is weaker is sPvP right ? and thief the weaker class ? double lol.
Try to follow your suggestion and play a bit more of OS/PvP man and you will get better, you will also notice that most people play thief and mesmer in OS just because its easier to win.

I guess it depends on what class you play. Ele is my main so good mesmers are very difficult but only 1 thief build (20-30 trickery) gives me a lot of trouble with boon steal.

They don’t need any more nerfs at all and none of your difficulties change the fact that a 6 second reveal is a ridiculous suggestion because stealth is an offensive as well as defensive mechanic for thief. It’s part of everything they do.

Seems very relative to build. Strength will be better in a longer fight and with builds where might is building up a lot over time. Probably much better for most ele builds which also use some conditions.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

My list is as follows, in descending order from Best to Worst:

1. Lightning Rod
2. Aquatic Benevolence
3. Stone Heart
4. Blinding Ashes
5. Elemental Contingency

Bonus Question

Of all the new GM traits, do you use any of them in your ‘Go-To’ build, and why?

I agree with that order.

I would say Lightning Rod and Aquatic Benevolence are about on the same level. And both for staff builds. Lightning rod could definitely have some value for zerker staff builds in WvW.

Stone heart (vs burst) and blinding ashes (1v1 I guess) seem very limited and I would never consider using them. Elemental contingency is all around useless due to extremely poor design with global ICD and purely passive skills like this don’t exactly promote skilled gameplay.

I have not tried any of these skills yet but probably will try lightning rod at some point.

I don’t like the diamond skin mechanics in general, not because it’s in any way overpowered (it’s not), but because it’s gimmicky and not promoting the kind of gameplay anet should be after.

To address the OP, to deal with a build specifically set to counter you, you can either:
a. Roll over and die
b. Adjust your own build to deal with that possibility
c. Leave that ele to the rest of your team who should have no problems with it.

DS already has very limited viability so a direct nerf is the wrong way to do it. A redesign would be better.

Before making ridiculous suggestions I would recommend the OP join a fight club or come to obsidian sanctum to fight more skilled players. Or check in on sPvP where thief is one of the weaker classes now.

I was looking over the wikipedia elo article. That makes sense then, it’s not about games won, it’s about the combined rating of the players which is hidden. I guess wins now are going to be worth less because of all the newer players in PvP. Losses too.

As with GW1 (GvG), the hardest part about playing with a team is getting everyone on at the same time. Since I don’t have a reliable schedule, I just prefer solo arena.

Does anyone know how the rankings are determined for the leaderboard?

Maybe I’m just being dumb but I’m looking at the top 25 for solo arena and there’s no consistent pattern how they determine it with number of wins, win percentage, etc… It seems all over the place: https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/soloarena

For example, in terms of the numbers they show, I’m actually doing a lot better than the listed #22 player for solo arena but I’m not in the top 1000, it just says 90% (above 90th percentile?). I’m curious how these ranks are chosen.

In my experience, S/D is pretty much forced into going glassy damage (zerker) with fresh air but at that it’s quite strong.

Condition is not ideal just because S/D isn’t ideal as a bunker.

D/D, S/D, and D/F and staff all seem viable now.

For D/D switch out sigil of fire for air. It’s almost twice as much damage to single targets.

Besides what oZii said, hydromancy and energy are good options with more defense/utility.

If you want full damage you’ll probably get the most out of 6/6/0/0/2 and full or almost full zerker. Blasting staff is pretty much the only necessity in a staff build.

I use the 0/2/0/6/6 classic d/d build for both staff and d/d since I’m always alternating between d/d and staff in WvW. I tried full celestial before and the damage was far to low and defense unnecessary. I use almost full zerker gear no matter what build or set I’m running because a staff ele’s survival is mostly with positioning and cantrips, not defensive stats.

Well coming back from a 4-5 month break I’m seeing better results in sPvP with d/d and overall weaker in WvW with staff due to the massive hit in crit damage. But I can’t say for sure since it seems sPvP is flooded really really bad players.

Like they said, crit damage got heavily nerfed by as much as 50% for celestial boots/gloves/shoulders and other pieces but the nerf was to all crit damage stat pieces of this type, not just celestial. Now crit damage on any piece of gear is normalized so it doesn’t matter where you have it.

So crit damage sets in general took a big nerf but among these sets, celestial got a minor buff too.

Dee Jay.2460:

If you’re at the point where you’re killing 3 enemies every 5 seconds you’ve already won the fight.

This. I was about to reply but noticed it was already said.

Well I’ve hardly played this game for months but nerfing critical damage across the board seems like a very odd change in terms of PvP balance.

It’s definltely not a “10% less overall damage” which would have had to be done though power or armor to be true. It’s a heavy nerf specifically for zerker builds and essentially no change for bunkers. So it makes sense if it was aimed at PvE and not PvP (WvW). It seemed there was already a difficult but generally good balance between offense and defense as it was. Not even considering balance between direct and condition damage.

I guess we’ll see how it plays out with time. Anet has certainly made big mistakes in the past that they ended up partially reverting.

tehkings.5912:

Thats migth be a noob question but how can sigil of energy/battle could be effective if a ele cant have 2 weapons to switch between

Attunement switching is the same for Sigil procs. Meaning ele has the most weapon switches of any class.