Guild Wars 2

Try this build for the Elementalist. It has an extremely high skill cap.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYnEEFZYlBaGwjYAZUoDEPsAHgDLPiBeoGA-ToAA1CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MKYKC

The difficulty of using it comes with your judgement of when to use your arcane skills. It requires a lot of mental work and experience before you’ll realise how valuable that arcane grandmaster trait is if used to its full potential.

I find that minion necros, spirit rangers and dps guardians are the most difficult to beat when fighting inside the cap point but I usually come out on top now I know how to take advantage of the traits… though dps guardians do seem to be hellish for trying to blind.

I just entered the solo que whilst playing in hotjoin. Then my game randomly crashed whilst the join match was counting down and I logged back in. This my friends is where I began to travel in time. For you see, I was not only able to join this same tournament but also the opportunity to join another popped up on my screen and before I knew it I was being warped into many different tournaments, smiling and waving as I met, lost and met other players again through my travels.

Ofc my time travel has it’s drawbacks. The main one being a 3 day dishonorable debuff and another being warped onto the opposing team so that we’re fighting no one. It was fun whilst it lasted though….

Anet, please remove this debuff before I cry.

Just going to throw out some facts. Here I will display some similar mobility skills which can be used for disengaging in sPvP and I would like some opinions and justification for this from players and if possible from a developer.

Elementalist:
Ride the lightning- cd 40s, if hitting a target 20s, range 1200

Ranger:
Hornet sting- cd 8s, range rollback 400 (evade), leap 600
Swoop- cd 12s, range 1100

Warrior:
Savage leap- cd 8s, range 600
Rush- cd 20s, range 1200

Take into consideration these are skills on melee weapons before posting please. Also, note that the Elementalist has the lowest base defense, the ranger is in the medium range and the warrior is at the top.

chronometria.3708:

I put my ele on hold and rolled warrior a while back. I`m cautiously positive of the coming changes, but it saddens me how long it has taken even to get these small steps and how clumsy those initial changes were.

Take diamond skin, for example. The proposed change, requiring that the ele remain over 90 percent of hitpoints to become immune to conditions, showed how little the developers appreciated the elementalist’s tiny health pool. Most powers that gave conditions would instantly bypass it as they were applied alongside damage that, to an ele, would be over that ten percent. That is ignoring all other sources of damage, which in most settings will be coming in thick and fast.

Ten percent to a warrior would have been fine, but on an ele, the percentages were meaning something different and it was as if nobody realised that. This, to me, showed a grievous lack of understanding of the issues the class faced.

As a staff ele who actually invested in trees like the fire tree, I couldn’t get the blasting staff trait. So I like that it is being moved low down in the arcane tree. Even so, fire is a desperately lacking tree and I`m going to be speccing out of most of it and about time, according to most of my peers. I was making a fair living as a condition ele, but even that was poor.

Why is it that staff earth one doesn’t renew bleed? I now play a rifle warrior and every auto-shot I fire inflicts bleed. Just making that one change would make condition staff so much better….but that change isn’t tabled to occur and I just don’t understand why.

Heck, make that the grandmaster earth trait and I`d still be happy. As it is, a condition ele struggles to inflict the very conditions it is supposed to be built around.

I will try out the new changes….but I sense I`m going to be on my warrior for a long while yet.

I was thinking about this last night. As a trait, the new diamond skin is out of place and extremely situational. I think it should be replaced with an eruption on melee damage with a 6 second cd to allow some greater condition builds in PvE, might stacking for extra condition damage whilst still being a strong but situational trait in sPvP as ranged players would not trigger the eruption and players who are using melee in the cap point can avoid the eruption through dodges or simply moving out of range fast enough but potentially losing a cap point this way.

CMstorm.8679:

maybe ele’s should just get an increase to their base toughness rather than buff their health pool…or not?

I think this would be too difficult to implement purely because of the base armour values which are determined by armour type (in theory). Simply put, Elementalists would have to move from light armour to medium armour.

Though I’m sure the probably easier change to toughness would be possible I don’t think they would go through with it because it wouldn’t seem suitable to the class type and would create issues would certain boosting effects in relation to toughenss values.

I just want to make something clear in hope that maybe someone up there might listen. The Elementalist is a brilliantly diverse class, offering effective damage with all main hand weapon types through a variety of different trait builds. It has great potential for acting as a bunker or providing support through both selfish and shared healing and buffs. It also provides a variety of combo fields for more complex group interactions. With so many arcane traits and skills we can take advantage of critical damage without even having to build for critical chance, leading to some extremely interesting builds. Even condition and power builds are given potential with a combination of utilities and traits.

So what’s my point?

It has potential. Almost everything about the class has been clearly taken into consideration to provide this diversity but one thing prevents us exploring this.

We naturally lack defense. It’s clearly available through our traits but our initial health pool and armour values combined are too low to make it worth exploring into the vast numbers of potential builds when instead we could increase our small chance of staying alive in a fight where avoiding damage is a top priority.

Just imagine you have a base health of 15k and take a look at those traits again. Try designing a build whilst you enjoy reading through those many traits that you forgot existed. You’d be surprised at how much potential is there, I certainly was.

There’s no condition meta because most classes have potentially effective ways of removing conditions now. That doesn’t make it a bad thing. It’s called balance and is something I’m pretty sure they’re aware of.

This trait is not affecting the skill lava font in sPvP.

Please fix this!

There are too many cliffhangers and not enough tragedy in the living story. Scarlet is willing to risk the lives of a large amount of respawning npcs and so why is she so reluctant to kill off those characters that threaten her plans? Please Anet, as someone who grew up playing games where the story thrived above all things, make the results of Scarlet’s actions less predictable and more like those of someone we should be afraid of. She is clearly capable of amazing things and has unique intentions which combined should be terrifying but so far she’s about as terrifying as the thought of my toast burning. Please Anet, give us things to remember.

Also, some additional thoughts on cleansing water for future balances. Maybe it could be a geyser trigger at a threshold of 30% health with a 15 second cd? That would certainly be a useful support trait and definitely fits in line with other grandmaster traits.

Sorry about all the requests. I just don’t want to see one of the two builds I can truly enjoy on my ele become useless.

I would truly like to see a change to the elementalist attunement skills cool down traits. Firstly they affect a much lesser relative portion of our total skills (we have more skills but they were balanced in this fashion) when compared to other classes and secondly they lack the additional bonuses that all other class cool down traits have. Surely we need some form of attunement based bonus as an addition to these traits?

Putting aquamancer’s alacrity into master tier was already a harsh hit to the water trait line but moving soothing disruption into master tier is destroying builds. The grandmaster trait cleansing water just became a whole lot less worthy of its tier. The sad part is that cleansing water, a grandmaster trait, is slightly less useful than the adept trait cleansing wave to begin with. Please at least rework cleansing water.

I’ll try to explain…

Cleansing water requires regeneration with a 5 second cd (as far as I remember from the past nerf). This means that to remove a condition from yourself and players when entering water attunement, just as cleansing wave would, you need to have elemental attunement ,which will now become a master tier arcana trait, equipped. There is use of staff skill 5 for this which grants two group removals with the trait but that’s ONE weapon out of all of your total land weapons that provide yourself or your group members with any regeneration. Cleansing wave requires no additional traits to become useful and will ALWAYS remove conditions from your group as well unlike cleansing water if you’re using regeneration on yourself only.

Anyway… if I use use regeneration on a group of people, does cleansing water even effect all members that get regeneration or is it only one? A slightly worrying thought.

Overall the changes to elementalist create more variety than destruction in builds but something is still bugging me. We lack in decent condition output. One of the problems is with our current bleed skills which are found only in earth and with conjured weapons and don’t provide consistency unless you’re fighting an enemy stood still and willing to let you slowly build your stacks.

Given the arguable nerf to arcana trait line with the new cd on attunements I think this area would be an appropriate place to address the condition issue. The arcana X skill isn’t considered valuable by most players and could be replaced with a trait similar to elemental attunement. When changing to an attunement it could have the following effects.

Fire – Burns surrounding foes for 3 seconds
Water – 2 stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds
Air – Blind target for 3 seconds
Earth – 3 stacks of bleeds on surrounding foes for 5 seconds

IMO this is actually less powerful than elemental attunement and so I believe it could be an appropriate master tier trait.

Also, arcane precision could use a buff to 50% chance with a 5 second cd to match many other profession traits. As it stands it’s extremely underwhelming in both duration and chance to trigger when compared to other professions traits that require many less points spent.

A variety in conditions wouldn’t hurt. Water could be a nice place to add in some poison or confusion. For example, replace trait II (shard of ice), as it’s not often valued, with a trait that grants soothing mist a 20% chance to inflict 1 stack of confusion for 4 seconds when struck. Hardly what I’d consider overpowered and would create diversity in sPvP.

Stop, drop and roll (VII) could also be replaced with a trait that adds a poison or confusion effect to water fields.

These changes would encourage points spent in all trait lines but air for a condition build, creating much diversity.

The final thing I’d like to suggest is that earthen blast (earth 15 points) is replaced with a 1 second cripple and 2 bleed stacks for 5 seconds to make changing out of earth attunement not as great a hindrance to condition damage as it currently is.

I hope you read this as I have felt changes like these have been necessary to the class for a long time.

oZii.2864:

It sounds good but not my style. With that said 0/0/30/20/20 but you could make a case for 0/0/30/10/30 for water field with evasive arcana in earth dodge. But if you really want to bunker 20-30 in water seems better.

Yeah, the lack of healing is bugging me quite a bit. The 15 trait and water cool downs at 20 is a major problem but at the same time evasive arcana is as well. What would be worth more?

2.5k heal on 10 second cd, -20% cd on water, 100 healing power and vitality…. or
A 10 second cooldown blast and equal heal that removes a condition, 10% boon duration and slightly reduced attunement cd? I’m leaning towards arcane.

Will throw out a few ideas.

1. New staff bunker build – 0 / 0 / 30 (protection with aura, armour of earth at % health, new condition immunity) / 10 (cantrips grant regen and vigour) / 30 (blasting staff, elemental attunement, evasive arcana)

Heal – ether renewal for ridiculous condition immunity/glyph for necessary regen and protection

Utilities – 1. Mist form, 2. Armour of earth
3. arcane wave slightly less useful because of cd on water skills but potentially must have for aura and spike heals/other two cantrips or arcane shield have great potential

Though it lacks in healing a bit, you can have permanent protection and therefore need less healing to maintain full health and keep the condition immunity.

Pros – conditions are a small scratch of a problem, more protection

Cons – less spike healing and potential for auras

Currently I run a staff support/bunker build in WvW with mostly clerics gear and some soldiers. My traits are 0 / 0 / 10 (III) / 30 (I-III-XI) /30 (V-VIII-XI). Heal-ether renewal, utilities – mist form, arcane wave, armour of earth.

It’s an extremely effective build which puts out a ton of healing when used right and has kept me alive in many 3v1s until the fighting side gave in.

nThe PvE version involves changing to aura share and protection with auras (frost spam) for group protection and a group reflect whe needed.

So now I see these traits movements for water and arcane and the amazing new grandmaster earth trait and all I can think about is… what potential bunker builds will we see with this patch? All weapons, all stats. Discuss!

I spent all my gold to buy this set only 2 weeks ago and it became my inspiration to play that character. Considering I bought a makeover kit with real life money to remove the glow effect as it became unpleasing to see, I find this armour change extremely saddening. I genuinely don’t want to log into my main character anymore.

Please change the appearance back to how it was or give an option to disable the glow.

Ty for restoring my desire to play in tier 1.

FOR HUMANITY!

Peak Time.

No Viz, I did not make it up.

Mighty Ice Arrow.9268:

Darkened.4076:

Thank you to SFR and VS for all the lootbags in EB today, was great fun commanding on that map for 14 hours. Some great fights all round!

Also a massive thank you to everyone that was following, we had a great night

// Beatrix Windrunner

Finally I know who the commander from Deso in EB is. Are proud and happy you say? Are you proud of double team with VZ? For hours you don’t even flip a VZ camp? Is this my imagination? No, VZ players know watt I’m talking about. It was epic for us yes, we never lost our keep, even when we get attacked from both sides, trebed from Bravos by Deso, and from Langour by VZ, we resisted at to consecutive attacks from VZ with golems, you are proud, you say, a big lol to you.
BTW are you the commander that Wemill put to cry a few weeks ago? Well he is back!!! Not played to many hours this week. Are you proud to let Anza in VZ hands for long time, and keep targeting SFR?

Yes I’m very, very proud to have played to all the guys from SFR during the weekend (guys sometimes I have to be hard with you because, we can’t do mistakes against VZ). Keep going “big” Deso commander, you only make us stronger.
I have nothing to say to the way VZ are playing, we have played like them when we are strong, for me the way they playing only show respect for us, they try to score points, that’s the name of the game, for us is a chance to all new commanders and players learn how to play, because he have a strong opponent we have to react according to that.

Please don’t hide behind problems, the only problem we are facing atm (butt all servers have it) is the skill delay, Anet must work in a solution to this.

We are not going to win this week again, but for me maybe I can have another “victory”, we need to stay one more week in T1, and after this another one, and so on. One day our guilds will come back, and we will be strong again.

What did I just read?