Guild Wars 2

As several others have indicated, this thread is just kitten If you really feel that downed state 2 is so bad why don’t you report this on the Dev forums or report in game as an exploit or bug. Coming on the Ele forums and crying about wanting a nerf to an already seriously overnerfed class already is trolling.

Reporting this thread.

toothless.1429:

Just play a guardian and get regen for free.
/clap

No need. I play an Ele and they get regen for free.

Whats wrong with Berserker gear?..

Power/Precision/Crit

Mix in survival trinkets – Power/Vitality/Toughness or heal power..

Works wonders.

Warriors have a downed state ability that allows them to pop back up and kill people and are invulnerable to damage. I have seen them countless times pop out of keep doors, go to downed, pop this ability and then just run right through the keep door again before going to downed state again. This is exactly the same thing as our mist form only better, because they can damage people while in this OP state.

Anet needs to nerf this Warrior downed state ability first and then worry about other less OP downed states like the Ele’s.

Staff can be used situationally well in sPvP and tPvP, but not as a primary build really. In Wv3 Staff builds rule the roost mostly because of the Keep/Tower humping that is what everyone spends 90% of their time doing.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

however… i found that what works in the mists is not always so great in spvp. in the mists i tend to spec more pve like. glass cannon stuff which doesnt work so good in actual play. so dont forget the basics.
toughness.
condition removal
hp’s

and most important… ease of use.
since the ele can die in one hit its important to not have to think too much about it. at least it was for me.

All of that is true. I build in Knights gems to beef up the survivability and I am still (always) tweaking the build for what works best in Wv3. The key to this build is active defense so if you get caught or badly CC’d your most likely done unless you can fight your way out of it. You need to be popping those Sigils as soon as they are up and using the combo fields and many blast finishers that D/D has (3 – DT, EQ, CE), or S/D (4 – DT, Pheonix, EQ, CE), or Staff (1 – Eruption), and use AW heavy too. This is a “best defense is an unbeatable offense” build.

While this build does not give you Earth 12, its darn powerful and is a hybrid Sigil/Aura build..

(copy/paste link)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmYbtxywjEAhHCgQCDFgIiowDlCzA;T8Ag0yoEQJhSFlCKquMeJ8yqjrLpODROiMF

I suggest you try this out on some dummies in the Mist with D/D. This build works nicely with any weapon though, but its a bit more challenging with Staff. The key to it is increased boon duration. Its fairly easy to burst up 18+ stacks of Might, but with increased boon duration, those stacks just keep on building and building and stay up there. Aura’s give you protection, fury and swiftness stacks, and you get the fury stacks for switching attunements as well and the extra goodies from Arcana 5.

Bsquared.3421:

Nonlinear.9823:

Yeah, 20 in Fire for Fire’s Embrace for auramancer is kind of a trap imo. You can’t take 30 Earth for Written in Stone so whenever you pop a signet you’ll lose the passive effect. With D/D your best auras are weapon skills and the points in arcane will not only let you swap faster but every ten points adds 10% boon duration.

If they could just swap it with Spellslinger

I don’t even care about losing the passives on the signets. The heal-per-cast on restoration signet is nice, but i can live without it for awhile, and the extra toughness on earth is inconsequential honestly, i would bring it JUST for the immobilize and for the chance to proc fire shield (and fury, swiftness, and prot for the group).

It’s really the 10 pts in arcane that I can’t do without. Elemental Attunement and the slight reduction on attunement swaps from 10 pts in arcane is just THAT good, it really isn’t worth swapping it out for anything for the most part.

I see your point. I have tried and tested the 20 fire build for the fire aura and it provides you with a lot of extra flexibility in your aura build for staff. I think its probably best to use for a heavy staff focused build because you only have access to one aura on a 30s CD without it. With this trait you have the potential to pop aura’s like a jack rabbit. It has like a 3s CD between signets. Given that through your Air and Earth aura traits you gain protection, fury, and swiftness every time you pop an Aura, that can add up significantly if your popping signets every time they come off CD. It really does make a difference.

Nonlinear.9823:

the problem with signet builds is all the signets.

Yea you do sacrifice our most powerful escape tools in favor of the signet stacking. This works awesome in a Staff build but not so much in D/D, but still doable with smart play and a more active defense definitely makes the build powerful, ie. roots and chills from SoE and SoW combined with the trait boons for using them AND the maintaining the passive buffs (cond. removal, tough, crit, heal).

Highlet.8039:

boozer.7815:

Give this one a try. Works great for me. I have tried a few variations (such as Water 30/Earth 30/Air 10) and TBH, they all work great.

(copy/paste link)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhMmYbtx3wjEAhCGMeAiIkIK8QRxM8A;T4Ag0ynEOJdS9kyJquMeJ8yGkrLZQDROiA

That’s a signet build. The thread was on Powerful Aura builds (30 water trait)

Its an aura build too, just not using the PA build. Like I mentioned in the edited post above, I do also use the PA build but I find going heavier on Signet use combined with Aura’s on Staff works best and it also works very well with all other weapon sets. Thing is that there are more aura’s available in D/D and D/F than in Staff so I try to use what works the best across all weapons for efficiency.

Give this one a try. Works great for me. I have tried a few variations (such as Water 30/Earth 30/Air 10) and TBH, they all work great.

(copy/paste link)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhMmYbtx3wjEAhCGMeAiIkIK8QRxM8A;T4Ag0ynEOJdS9kyJquMeJ8yGkrLZQDROiA

A really fun Staff rotation with this is →Eruption→Magnetic Shield→Frozen Ground→FGS→Fiery Whirl

You gotta be quick with this but if you work it right you get the mag shield aura, frost aura with the eruption blast finisher, followed by the whirl finisher from FGS. The effects of this are ~6 stacks of protection, 6 stacks of Fury, 6 stacks of swiftness, frost aura, and mag aura. You may not get the mag aura after the frost aura executes. Havent fully tested that yet. When the FW goes off though you will have the frost aura up and most of your boons still though. With the combination of runes you will have an extra 30% on your boons and an extra 45% on Might stacks (executed via combo fields and etc.)

The aura’s themselves are very nice without doubt, but are actually secondary to the boon stacking benefits. Staff Earth 3 is darn powerful vs. any ranged as it reflects ANY incoming ranged attacks at the instant of cast. This can be really fun to watch when you pop it and run out in front of a zerg or if you pop it right before going into Tornado form. With any spec in Earth and maybe Arcana 6 to get the attunement switch buffs to boot, you become a very well protected tornado ripping through people for about 4-6s…

But that’s just it, isn’t it?.. The Ele never was designed to be a one button wonder class. Learning how to use the MANY build options, combo field/finishers, aura’s, and etc.. THAT is what turns the Ele into a god on the battlefield.

Staff has access to two aura’s – one on Earth 3, the other via fire trait (fire shield on signet cast). BOTH get the benefit of Earth trait 12.

Yes, auramancer is in fact a VERY POWERFUL build in any weapon type you use. It is highly effective when solo PvP and especially for teams. Lets face it though, it is nigh impossible to find others willing to take advantage of the very highly powerful auras the Ele can provide but even if its just you, you will find that there are very few other builds that can provide this level of boon stacking in such a short time period, especially after the EA fix. If you combine this with effective use of Combo fields and finishers, this build easily outshines the FoTM bunker build in every way.

Auramancer is the only build I strongly advocate a medium – high Arcana spec for, and that is only because of the traitline buffs – increased boon duration and attunement swaps.

Nonlinear.9823:

I’ve tried condition damage build, a healing build with 1400 healing and a glass cannon build and for dungeons I prefer the glass cannon. I use the heal/support build for condition removal and some light healing and water fields in WvW (with 1400 healing or so the splash on staff water 1 does about 500 but it’s mostly kind of meh although you’re really hard to kill with cantrips) but prefer full blown glass cannon for PvE. I kill stuff at least 35% to 40% faster, faster kills means faster clears and less chance of something going wrong. The obvious tradeoff is survival but I find that proper skill choice before the encounter is more beneficial than losing crit/crit damage and power speccing into other lines.

For PvE I use 30/30/0/0/10 like the poster above. Fire is 10% damage, 20% CD reduction and might on fire cast. Air is 20% CD reduction on glyphs, increased damage when target is less then 25% health and 3% increased crit damage for 10 sec when using arcane. I do what said poster does and switch the arcane talent depending on situation, V for group buffs and boon, I for more DPS, VI for vigor.

Stand at max range. Put down fire fields for your bros. Try to keep burning up on the target with fire 3 so you do more damage but if someone else is putting up burning then don’t bother because fire 3 and your ticks only do maybe 350 damage and you could be flinging more fireballs instead.

Dungeon survival is more about using the proper skills, range, food, and knowing when to dodge and when to strafe. From my experience glyphs are superior to signets in dungeons, especially traited heal glyph. I use arcane blast whenever it is off CD (it has a 1500 range btw) and usually put arcane shield on the bar for easy fights just for the crit damage increase because you don’t have all that many good single target skills to use at max range (elemental harmony glyph is ok with traits and will help keep up burning). Armor of Earth, arcane shield, mist form and earth elemental are good for running past trash. If boss destroys my elemental I use fiery greatsword.

I wear cof beserker gear with soldier crests, berzerker staff with fire sigil (excellent aoe damage), berserker neck, knights earrings and rings (two with ruby jewels) and a defender backpack with a soldier crest. I use stew for more dodges and might on dodge. My stats:

http://i46.tinypic.com/2ppx892.jpg

3,352 attack (2240 power)
51% crit (1,903 precision) and 69% crit damage.
2,224 armor (1,304 toughness)
11,925 hp (1,028 vitality)

@80 Normal fireball does about 1k damage + splash, ~2.4k on crit, upwards of ~2.8k to ~3k with 3% crit damage boost from arcane, target less than 25% and some vuln (which you contribute a little bit to with 25 in air). Arcane blast does about ~3k when less then 25%. Meteor shower and glyph of storms both hit like a truck, I use them whenever there are more than two mobs (or more than one for glyphs of storms). Last hit of fiery greatsword does about 4.5k-5k + splash, I’ve had it crit for 7k a few times. Sigil of fire adds even more aoe damage.

My personal playstyle, but I prefer this build to other builds and find it the most fun out of all the dungeon builds I’ve tried.

I have made it my mission lately to run full out glass cannon builds with zero arcana in Wv3 lately and I must tell you, the build you are using for PvE works VERY VERY VERY well in Wv3 as well (I trait 10 in Water instead of Arcana sometimes). Give it a shot. I think you might be pleasantly surprised. I find that almost everyone else is running glass cannon out there too! 3-4k fireball crits are fun!

A guild build. Works with all weapon sets.

I see lots of theory crafting posts lately and they are all good for just talking, but what makes any of you think Anet will take any of these ideas to formula?

All just a bunch of hot air IMO..

mouse.1689:

Ele’s can do massive damage if they actually spec glass cannon, which they almost never do. The survivability is bad, but the damage is easily on par with other professions’ glass cannon builds, if that’s what you’re going for.

This is correct. I bolded the most important line. This happens I think mostly due to the sheeple mindset and ignorance of the class overall.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Earth Bow – Not sure how to make a bow defensive lol

Earth should be all CC – Roots, Snares, Stuns, Daze/Confuse

Otaur.9268:

My personal best is about 9k… I am running a 20 30 0 0 20 build though. The person in that video is running something like 30 30 10 0 0 or 30 30 0 10 0. I know 0 arcane because of the 15 second cooldown on attunements. I would shoot for the 30 30 10 0 0 build though, because the Earthquake may have +10% dmg, air +20% to players knocked down + 20% to those under 25% life, +10% in air, Power Plus Might for each fire spell, +10% damage, +5% to burning targets.

That is only a guess, but that seems to be accurate. He may also be using Might on Weapon swap sigils, as I see him get 9 stacks of might without combo fields. So i’d say 2 sigils of battle. He is definitely 30 air, because his target becomes vulnerable on crit, meaning another 10% damage boost.

Hope this helps you to see what happened in that video…

/agree. Isn’t it amazing what an Ele can do if played properly? Someone posted that other “oh kitten” video above and they are right — Its amazing what an Ele can do if you actually LISTEN to people that know the class better than you!

Maybe if the people that come on these forums spend as much time actually LEARNING the class instead of wasting the time posting they might actually see that like the rest of us do.

Solori.6025:

Ima leave this here

http://youtu.be/8BDQGDELcUk

ele hitting firegrab for 13k

That was classic. Ive never seen damage on it for more than 8k. That Ele’s build must be very high crit.

Solori.6025:

Mogar.9216:

boozer.7815:

Mogar.9216:

The first 10 pts is needed in Arcane. The next 5 is almost a must but not as important and the first 10. Sure you can run without, but you are doing it wrong. Trust me I have tried so hard not to use arcane, the extra heal + def is just too much to not use.

Well, thats because your most likely playing the class wrong. Arcana is a very well put together traitline and it is very powerful, but it is not necessarily our best line, nor is it necessary to spec into it to do well with this class.

So in one hand you are saying Arcana is powerful then right away you as saying we shouldn’t spec into it. Name another line that have better traits than Arcana. Sure if you don’t want to use the best line we have all the more power to you. I can see that you are glass cannon spec. I have never meet an effective glass cannon ele in pvp or wvw. I have never read one post by any one saying glass cannon eles are tough or effective. I have never saw any video of glass cannon eles that’s any good period.

Earth, Water, and Fire all have some really great traits in their line.

Arcana is a good line, but it isnt the best, it has some great traits in it, but depending on the build it could actually be a bad descision to put points into Arcana.
Which is the point I think people are trying to make.

Exactly right. And if you havent heard or seen anyone playing an effective glass cannon Ele in sPvP or Wv3 then that kind of makes it official… You haven’t bothered to actually, well.. LOOK!!

Curring.9752:

Heres one tip for might stacking, if you see an enemy zerg or are defending a keep switch to scepter/dagger 1st and build up stacks of might using that then switch to staff and stack any might you can with that then let off a meteor shower. That about 18+ stacks of might w/o any traits/attune swap bonuses ect.

Yea I have tried that and your right, it works, but thats a bit more dancing than even I care to mess with. My build currently builds might by itself just through slamming people while in Fire and also through attunement dancing so once I stack up that initial Might/Fury, its really more about maintaining it while I lay down the pain. Fights usually dont last long enough to cap Might this way, but if you have a Warrior buddy to help you stack, you can cap Might in like 2s and just keep it there the whole fight like that. Wish I had taken some screenies of some of the damage I lay down while capped like this. Like I said, its eye popping.

Mogar.9216:

The first 10 pts is needed in Arcane. The next 5 is almost a must but not as important and the first 10. Sure you can run without, but you are doing it wrong. Trust me I have tried so hard not to use arcane, the extra heal + def is just too much to not use.

Well, thats because your most likely playing the class wrong. Arcana is a very well put together traitline and it is very powerful, but it is not necessarily our best line, nor is it necessary to spec into it to do well with this class.

Avatara.1042:

The profession is broken at its foundation, and it most likely needs to be redone.

Actually, no its not. There is a massive cross section of the Ele playing population that actually enjoys the class exactly like it is and wishes it to stay just the same. Thanks, but no thanks.

morrolan.9608:

Aba.6419:

Very pretty please put your build into some www. Please.

morrolan.9608:

Yeah if you want to be an aoe bomber glyph of storms is a must. aoe blind in earth form, aoe chill in water form ……………….

I personally think a cantrip based build is a better boon generator for staff eles. Mine is 10/10/0/30/20 with the relevant cantrip based traits chosen.

Here’s the build I use:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEIQFAWhImSbxR4gjEAkHn4CLhCKIKURRxM7A;ToAA1CookyIlQKLXOpkSNAZSA

I swap the utilities in and out but generally have 2 cantrips there all the time.

Try giving this a go -

(copy/paste link)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEQQFAWhMmYbtxygjEAkCtEeQgAJIU8gDlCzA;ToAg0Cnoay0koJbTumkNNEZSA

SuiRyuJin.4615:

i understand the want to combo with finishers but if this built is intended to be taken into WvW u simply wont be using much anything thats short ranged. enemy isnt going to sit still and let eruption to combo off either.

XD i run 30/30/10 in full zerker with accessory for WvW on my ele. u… dont want to be anywhere within 1k distance with that if u can help it. u can do some stupidly silly aoe dmg in exchange though XD i built it not to depend on any field or combo simply on stupidly high crit dmg increase fireball sucks at 1kish dmg but mine goes over 3k at times on crit. considering how staff combo require either close range or long combo time to setup it really isnt something u want to try on full glass cannon.
using sigil of fire with full rubies on everything. i think my crit dmg is 103%. theres no setup time, theres only cooldown time on fire skills. of course i am sure u can get higher burst aoe potential with comboing using slot skills but it also drastically increase any downtime of ur dmg potential if u depend on them.

Ok, so thats a fine build you got there and you claim you dont need or use “short range” combo fields. You go on to say that, with crits, you get 3k FB’s, and I believe you because I do the same or close to that with my build. So now lets imagine that you start using “short range” combo fields and lets compare your damage output..

Try -

Eruption on yourself, followed by Lava Font, followed by Arcane Wave — Do all this right on top of yourself. Thats ~7-10 stacks of Might depending on traits/build. More might = more damage.

Or

Eruption → Ice Field → Arcane Wave

That will give you ~3 stacks of protection, Ice Shield, and 3 stacks of Fury. Fury = Crit/Crit damage. More fury = more crit/crit damage.

This takes ~2-3 seconds to achieve and lasts for ~12s.

Ok, so now that you have all these crazy boons stacked on yourself, go ahead and unleash your best ranged dps options on bad guys. Lets see who hits for more/harder.. You with your “I dont mess with combo fields because I am just awesome”, or someone else with your identical build who does stack boons…

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

boozer.7815:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

boozer.7815:

Well, the basic idea here is that your character specializes in one attunement… So that attunement should be more effective than all the others. This is in line with the “Lightning Mage”, or the “Ice/Water Wizard” concept. I do agree with your assessment of losing stats though, so perhaps just call it an overall 10% increased effectiveness for that chosen attunement which offsets the loss of all the other weapons.

so you wouldnt have access to the other elements?
That would be a HUGE nerf to the class

We NEED the other elements for all out defense/offense abilities they cant all be sqeezed onto a single set of 5/10 abilities or would you rather it – if you picked

Fire you ONLY had damage – No CC, no Defense, no healing
Air you ONLY had CC/Group damage – Less damage then fire, no healing, no defense
Water you ONLY had healing – no damage, no CC, no defense
Earth you ONLY had defense – no damage, no healing, no CC

?

I said you would lose the option of slotting the other Conjured Weapons, NOT the regular attunement skills or swaps…. This is what Plat suggested and I am building on it.

Essentially, you would gain a 5th attunement slot. The last one would be the weapon. So you would now have 4 attunement slots and also a weapon slot. You would no longer need to slot a weapon in 6-9. It would always be available to you via your utility slot..

So we would basically lose like 4 or 5 utility abilities and what about the Greatsword?
In my opinion as it is, this wouldnt work. Keep them as “kits” and get some other new F5 ability that can be cast in attunement no matter what the ability is

You lose the ability to summon 3 other weapons. On second thought, FGS is fine and could stay as an additional Summon in our Elite slot. Hey, its an elite slot after all so the option should remain to us to summon an additional powerful weapon from it. Doing it this way produces the following:

1. The f5 slot now becomes an insta cast weapon. No summon needed, and you get that weapon without any duration or charge hindrances. You will also be able to swap in or out of it per normal attunement swap limitations, ie. attunement swap CD based upon Arcana spec.
2. No longer a need to slot weapons in the 6-8 slots or the need to summon them except for the FGS. This means you can focus slots 6-8 for Glyphs, Cantrips, etc. and still have the use of your chosen weapon with the option to swap to another attunement at will.
3. This opens the door for combo field/finisher options we currently do not have with the current setup. Think of the possibilities…

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

boozer.7815:

Well, the basic idea here is that your character specializes in one attunement… So that attunement should be more effective than all the others. This is in line with the “Lightning Mage”, or the “Ice/Water Wizard” concept. I do agree with your assessment of losing stats though, so perhaps just call it an overall 10% increased effectiveness for that chosen attunement which offsets the loss of all the other weapons.

so you wouldnt have access to the other elements?
That would be a HUGE nerf to the class

We NEED the other elements for all out defense/offense abilities they cant all be sqeezed onto a single set of 5/10 abilities or would you rather it – if you picked

Fire you ONLY had damage – No CC, no Defense, no healing
Air you ONLY had CC/Group damage – Less damage then fire, no healing, no defense
Water you ONLY had healing – no damage, no CC, no defense
Earth you ONLY had defense – no damage, no healing, no CC

?

I said you would lose the option of slotting the other Conjured Weapons, NOT the regular attunement skills or swaps…. This is what Plat suggested and I am building on it.

Essentially, you would gain a 5th attunement slot. The last one would be the weapon. So you would now have 4 attunement slots and also a weapon slot. You would no longer need to slot a weapon in 6-9. It would always be available to you via your utility slot..

Well, the basic idea here is that your character specializes in one attunement… So that attunement should be more effective than all the others. This is in line with the “Lightning Mage”, or the “Ice/Water Wizard” concept. I do agree with your assessment of losing stats though, so perhaps just call it an overall 10% increased effectiveness for that chosen attunement which offsets the loss of all the other weapons.

This is a great discussion and there are some awesome ideas bubbling up from it. Whether Anet will listen to us or not is another story but, to expand on all the above, I was thinking that if we take Plats idea of picking an attunement, you basically choose that attunement to specialize in above all others. At that point you then will get additional benefits for being in that attunement, those traits/skills would get a 10% buff and all others a 10% decrease in overall effectiveness. The chosen weapon set becomes a utility slot much like the Engy and when you select it, your skills change over to that weapons, with increased stat bonuses to include Plats suggestions and an additional 10-20% stat bonus to offset the loss of all the other weapons which we would lose unless we run back to town and respec.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

boozer.7815:

PlatypusRex.3428:

I see.

What if when you declare your element of choice at character creation it determines your conjure weapon as an F5? You could change it later. Existing Eles would be given the choice after a patch or when re-traiting. This would let people see themselves as “lightning elementalists, wielding the hammer” or “earth elementalists, wielding the shield” without changing anything else related to attunement swapping.

Now your talking, but not sure where your going with this…

Your talking about forcing people to choose one attunement over all others as a “primary”. This is an outstanding idea to me. Not so sure about others. Also, assuming Anet was willing to completely “re-tool” the Ele into something like this, how would the Conjurs work? What about your regular abilities in your chosen Attunement?

An idea could be – The abilities change depending on your current Atunement for example for “Frost Bow”

Flame Bow: Good AoE damage and Multi target damage – similar to the staff
Water Bow – Similar to water Staff – Healing, chill
Air – Good Single Target, a Good Multi target (fan shot?) and some sort of CC like cripple, weakness or something

Earth would be the tough one, could make it like the staff but tweak it so they suit a bow weapon. This could be done for all the conjures so that you dont have an Offensive and defensive Conjures – let you continue to play the way you like with the element you like

Like where your going with this and its kind of what I thought Plat was headed towards.. Didn’t realize he was talking about nerfing our class…

PlatypusRex.3428:

All the choice would determine is what conjure you get in your new F5 slot. Conjures would no longer be available as a utility spell. Choose earth, you get the shield in your F5 slot. Swap to it like you do everything else. Tweak the cool downs a bit. Choose water, you rock the bow….same as above. Make the “wrong” choice? Go to town, retrait, and be given the option to choose your new primary element…which really is just what conjure you want in your F5.
Change nothing else about attunements 1-4 and how they work.

So why would I want to lose the use of all the other Conjurs? What do you propose to offset the loss of 4 other weapons? You have basically turned a great concept into a nerf proposal here..

No thanks!! Ele’s have been way overnerfed as it is. We don’t need any more.

PlatypusRex.3428:

I see.

What if when you declare your element of choice at character creation it determines your conjure weapon as an F5? You could change it later. Existing Eles would be given the choice after a patch or when re-traiting. This would let people see themselves as “lightning elementalists, wielding the hammer” or “earth elementalists, wielding the shield” without changing anything else related to attunement swapping.

Now your talking, but not sure where your going with this…

Your talking about forcing people to choose one attunement over all others as a “primary”. This is an outstanding idea to me. Not so sure about others. Also, assuming Anet was willing to completely “re-tool” the Ele into something like this, how would the Conjurs work? What about your regular abilities in your chosen Attunement?

Sure. Try running a Sigil/Auramancer build and its awesome.

PlatypusRex.3428:

Would you use conjures more if they didn’t drop a 2nd weapon but had 50% faster cool downs on all skills?

Yes.

PlatypusRex.3428:

Could you see this as a viable play style?

Yes, with a few more tweaks. What you suggest is a good start, but more is needed for it to become a viable build.

PlatypusRex.3428:

Would you consider this OP?

Not by a long country mile.

PlatypusRex.3428:

The initial post shows what the cool downs would be if they were all cut in half if you want to consider it without having to look up the skills.

The suggested CD’s would be fine if they were coupled with a swap on demand utility, similar to the Engy utility slots. Without this, very few people I think would ever use Conjured Weaps as a main build because swapping is too awkward and you lose the benefit of your primary skills while using them. For people to want to use them there needs to be much more of a compelling reason to do so.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

mouse.1689:

I could spend 0 Trait points and do fine in sPvP. Technically, no points are required at all. But if you’re going to spend points, and you don’t put at least 15 of them in Arcane, you’re playing a non-optimal build.

Again i disagree. In YOUR opinion its “sub optimal” in mine, it works well

Arm is right. Arcana never was essential in Wv3 and now after the EA nerf speccing into Arcana is completely unnecessary to achieve eye popping damage numbers. If anything, by my experience you are handicapping yourself by NOT going high Fire/Air for a pure glass cannon build.

SuiRyuJin.4615:

i am not sure about ur choice of arcane wave. u want to be range dps but arcane wave is strictly a close range aoe. if u want dmg, use arcane blast for single target or glyph of storm for aoe i would say.

He is correct in his use of Arcane Wave. It is the bread and butter blast finisher along with Eruption for any bomber based Staff Ele. Don’t think about using everything at range as a bomber Ele. Think instead about how you make use of our Combo Fields…. A true bomber Ele makes heavy use of self combo fields to stack up Might, Fury, and etc.. You then use those 10+ Might stacks to rain down AoE death on a grand scale. The damages I have worked up to on a Meteor Swarm are truly epic.

Yes. Glass Cannon Ele. does indeed work exceptionally well when played right. Have been doing a build similar to this for weeks now and absolutely fell in love with it. Couple tips -

-Blasting Staff is nice, but not necessary. I spec 0 into Arcana and my build works better than anything else I have ever been able to do with an Arcana spec after the EA nerf. I am currently 30/20/0/20/0 in full Berserker gear, trinkets included. I run Sigil of Battle and Undead Runes. Rubies in everything else. This build is very much glass cannon, but this build also truly gives you the cannon on both ends – raw dps AND condition damage. This gives me ~3200 Power, ~52% Crit/56 Crit Damage if I remember right or close to that. You blow things up with this, but also die very very very fast if caught by a Thief or Warrior but only if your not watching for that. In PvE you melt things. Fast. If the fight lasts longer than 30s then you might be in trouble if you don’t run.

-Sigils. Variations of the Auramancer build works very very well with glass cannon Staff Ele.
-Glyphs. Glyph builds work very well and posters above are right. GoS is the way to go for a bomber build IF your traited into Glyphs. If your going for a Glyph build then I would supplement traits into Cantrips as well and go for Mist Form or other Cantrips to give you trait benefits for using them as well.
-Learn to use Combo Fields. These are absolutely essential to any bomber or glass cannon build. Yes, you need to spend a couple seconds preloading yourself up with boons, but I think you will find it worth the trouble.

Well yea I agree that for sPvP Staff is not even an option more than once. It needs LOTS more CC options for it to be even remotely viable for sPvP.

Conjures need to have a swap on demand utility associated with them to truly be useful so that you can fluidly switch between one weapon to another similar to our attunement swaps. Agree with the utility slot idea like the Engy would probably make this work as a viable build.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

- Useless Traits
- Broken Traits
- Bugged Traits
- Bugged Skills
- Bugged utilities

Do the other classes have these as well?

Yes. Almost every class suffers from one or more of the things on your list.

/agree with the Water Attunement request. Every Attunement should have good dps potential and that includes Air Staff, which sucks right now for that.

Erebus Delirium.4892:

Finally, the cat is out of the bag. This build is drastically overpowered. When I first started going up against players using this build, I called it the “armored cannon build” because that’s exactly what it is.

This is pretty much THE Elementalist build for WvW. This build is going cookie-cutter and needs a nerf for good reason. The “only 0.1% of players are capable of playing this way” argument is completely inaccurate. The same argument was once used for Mesmers, and look what happened to them.

This is very true and it is highly likely to get nerfed if a lot more Ele’s start using this build in Wv3, eg. EA nerf. The build itself now that EA has been fixed is pretty much harmless in Wv3 except that its survivability is too much and Ele’s can harass large numbers of people indiscriminately much more effectively than a tank can.

Strang.8170:

On a serious note, because we liked a trait and what it brought into our playstyle, we all were just exploiters that can´t really play?

I didn’t say that and that was not intended. I don’t think that most people realized that EA was NOT supposed to produce a blast finisher and TBH, its Anet’s fault for allowing that bug to stay in the game as long as it did.

Also, the real lesson to be learned here is that when this type of thing happens – ie. some smart guy/gal posts a build that works really well, and then people flock to emulate it, Anet pays attention and then nerfs it. Especially when that same person posts like 100 vids of it…..

This thread still alive? Seriously?..

EA got the nerf hammer but really just got bug fixed. Well, not really a hammer but more like a hatchet. The spell abilities still trigger, do damage, people die, etc.. The wall of tears is just because the blast finisher got taken away, so now we just have Arcane Wave and our standard ability finishers that we have always had, ie. Dragons Fang, Eruption, and etc. etc..

While I understand that some people are upset that they put their whole basket of eggs on one build because they were incorrectly convinced that Arcana builds were the only viable options, and as I have said many times before, they certainly were not and are still not the only viable builds for an Ele. So this really is a LTP issue and nothing more than that.

Just look at the history to this whole drama. First, everyone flooded the forums here wailing and crying that the Ele sucked and that it had no viable builds and etc..

Next, a couple smart people posted video’s and builds about something THEY discovered. Then a whole lot of people all flocked to emulate this bunker build. Now, because of all these people exploiting some traits in ways they were never ever intended to be used, Anet fixed them. Now I guess you will all have to wait for another smarter person to find a build for you, or hey! You can find a build for yourself that works for you!! How about giving that a shot?

PlatypusRex.3428:

Oh, and I’m effective from multiple ranges; no weapon swap needed.

Sounds like a cool build. I have played around with a couple of builds lately focusing on CW’s too and found them to be very effective for PvE. You say Wv3 too though so I would like to see your build.

haviz.1340:

boozer.7815:

Navzar.2938:

… and once again, its far more than “one less blast finisher”. You have to consider its worth compared to other blast finishers like arcane wave, or dragon’s tooth (which we also lost, but not much complaint about that one).

Dragon’s Tooth: The blast finisher for this skill now triggers at the spell location rather than the character’s location.

Actually no, that’s not what the patch notes say. Dragons Tooth still has its blast finisher, which now correctly triggers at the location in which it falls.

So what I see from reading the actual patch notes, we lost one (1) blast finisher, which we were never supposed to have in the first place. The sky is not falling yet.

Actual patch notes don’t reflect actual changes. Simply put, it’s bugged and won’t trigger any finishers. So next patch might be about fixing wrong tooltip ;<

If Dragons Tooth is not triggering a blast finisher then that is a bug and they need to fix that.

Yea, a lot of those tool tips are not very up to date too and they will probably do a patch to fix a lot of those for all the classes.

Navzar.2938:

… and once again, its far more than “one less blast finisher”. You have to consider its worth compared to other blast finishers like arcane wave, or dragon’s tooth (which we also lost, but not much complaint about that one).

Dragon’s Tooth: The blast finisher for this skill now triggers at the spell location rather than the character’s location.

Actually no, that’s not what the patch notes say. Dragons Tooth still has its blast finisher, which now correctly triggers at the location in which it falls.

So what I see from reading the actual patch notes, we lost one (1) blast finisher, which we were never supposed to have in the first place (Where did it say that EA was supposed to have a blast finisher? Nowhere, because it was not supposed to have one by design). So what actually happened here is Anet fixed a bunch of our bugs. Its kind of upsetting that two of those bugs happened to roll in the players favor and were so heavily exploited to the point where people felt that they were not exploits and were in fact, normal, but as you can see, they were bugs and got fixed. This is what Anet should be doing, no?.. Now if they could do that to the abilities that Thieves and other classes are currently exploiting, we would all be happy I think.

Navzar.2938:

“Unintended feature”= exploit

Exactly right. The OP part of it was that this “unintended feature” gave us another blast finisher on the move, enabling us to stack up extra boons on yourself and others that Anet never intended for us to be able to do. Now, we just have one less blast finisher available to us. That is all.

ThiBash.5634:

boozer.7815:

The fun of this class for me is in demonstrating ways in which I can use the Ele’s abilities in combination with others and then in all of us reaping the benefits through teamwork. The fact is that the Staff Ele brings more combo field options to the table than any other class this game currently has today. Those can be used in any number of ways to turn your team into a powerhouse. That is what the Staff Ele is supposed to be doing, IMO.

We could do that very well with Evasive Arcana, and still perform our own combos.

You’d have had to have mastered Evasive Arcana play to truly appreciate why it was so much fun.

Think of it this way: staff elementalists used to be moving all over the place, dodging left and right and comboing (and missing combos) as much they could.

Now, our gameplay consists of standing in the back, placing a field every few seconds and hopefully see a heart appear in the distance.

Which sounds like it’d be more fun to do?

EA as it was used was deemed to be too OP. With it you could pop off absolutely insane combo’s giving yourself and your team way too much of the goodies we can dish out. Now that its gone we cant dish out quite so much goodness, or we have to work a lot harder to do it by ourselves. However, when coordinating with a team, you still lose a little bit (one less blast finisher option available to us), but you still have the potential to cap boons with a bit more work from your team mates.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

Generally, you want your game to be more active and interesting than not, right?

Agree, but I do not play this class just because of one trait, nor do I feel that one trait makes this class fun. Apparently, that is not the way Anet intends for that trait to be used. Ce la vie.

I guess we need to learn to use how our Combo Fields work when teaming up with other classes, like say.. A Warrior! Most finishers in the game of any class. Or how about a Guardian, or a Necro, or a Mesmer, and etc.. LTP the game as it was intended to be played, which is to use your abilities in combination with other classes as part of a team. I do not recall Anet ever saying that the Ele was supposed to be played strictly solo and not as a valuable part of a team…..

The fun of this class for me is in demonstrating ways in which I can use the Ele’s abilities in combination with others and then in all of us reaping the benefits through teamwork. The fact is that the Staff Ele brings more combo field options to the table than any other class this game currently has today. Those can be used in any number of ways to turn your team into a powerhouse. That is what the Staff Ele is supposed to be doing, IMO.