Guild Wars 2

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Whats the point of not being able to be Crit Hit, if you yourself are no threat what so ever.

Y’know how bunker Guards are the only build type that’s stuck around at the top of the meta since forever? Low damage output but very high survivability makes for a very good bunker - combining Stone Heart with Cleansing Water could make for a pretty durable point holder.

I’m thinking maybe Staff, 0/0/6/6/2, with protection on auras, stability on Earth Attune, regen when crit (which should function whenever against condi foes and so not hiding in Earth Attunement), something else in master-level water (edit: oh, Alacrity, for reduced field cooldowns, of course!), and maybe Arcane Mastery (paired with Arcane utilities) for utility in the Staff’s fields.
Gotta wait and see to test this, of course - especially to find out which rune, sigil and amulet combinations are most appropriate.

The more important question is: will lingering elements work with it? If it will then there is a chance to use this trait in some build, if not – gg wp anet. I’d really like to see answer to this question from some red-tagged guy, but knowing how many kitten were given to ele problems I have no hope.

It hopefully will – the only real argument against Lingering Elements working with all “while attuned” traits is that you could potentially stack +60% damage or something, if you took all the “while attuned” traits and cycled quickly. This would, however:
- only last for a second or so
- lock you out of all attunements after
- lack a lot of the utility that comes from other, non-damage-increasing traits

Without Lingering Elements, this could maybe still be useful for mitigation of massive bursts… or in conjure builds?

EverythingEnds.4261:

MM of SoloQ is bad and often leads to very unbalanced separation of bunkers among the teams.
Meaning, 1 team migth have a 2-3 bunkers while the other one has 0-1 bunkers.
This is already bad for the other PvP maps. The fact that on Skyhammer you also have to hold the Canon increases this effect.

There are 3 serious problems I have with this map.

The first one, the biggest one, is that instagib is not fun for me. At all. It’s frustrating to die to, and unsatisfying to kill by.

Second is that CC and stability are not even slightly fairly balanced between classes, and this map is all about bringing as much CC and stability as you possibly can.

Thirdly is what EverythingEnds says: team composition matters, and in soloq this means you’ll get all sorts of team matchups. The map, with its increadibly heavy focus on CC, rewards the team with more knockback-tastic (cheesemode, if you want) builds/profession – far more than the advantage that a lucky/unlucky teamcomp will affect the outcome of matches on any other map.

Add to these that the map is buggy as hell (gate doesn’t work, camera hell when you’re near to a platform as it breaks, sometimes don’t die when you fall ‘to your death’), and you have an altogether infuriating game to play.

PvP will always be even footing - no vertical progression, no "you won because you’re in ascended while I’m in rares". Making players start off at a disadvantage, or forcing them to grind for gear before they can play effectively, would be terribly unfair.

If/when gear unification happens, I expect that you’ll look like you’re wearing the same armour as in PvE/WvW, but it’ll only function as a skin - within Heart of the Mists or a PvP map:
- your PvE/WvW runes, sigils, traits, skillbar and item stats (from weapons/armour/trinkets) won’t function
- your PvP runeset, sigils, traits, skillbar and amulet/jewel will kick in

MithranArkanere.8957:

You address CC themselves. A single creature continuously CCed should progressively become resistant to CCs the more it takes within a short time, until it gets a free stun break and becomes immune to CCs for a short time.

Ding. Continuous CC spam no longer works, and CCs go back to being what they should: Strategic tools to turn the pace of the game.

This sounds pretty good, but would require very significant time and effort to implement and balance.

A similar idea came up with regards to Thieves and repetitive spamming of skills a while back: increase initiative costs each time a skill is used in succession, so that the Thief can still create unique combos through repeated use of skills, but can’t 22222 or 33333 (which is almost entirely what folks have against the class) because they’ll run out of initiative very fast.
My own take on this would be to add a background cooldown to each weapon skill, and use the increased initiative cost only during that cooldown – any skill can be used at any time, if there’s enough initiative, but using any skill too soon after you’ve already cast it incurs this extra cost.

Of course both of these suggestions can’t happen anytime soon, since one is a pretty common core mechanic (hard control) and one is basically an entire profession overhaul… but I like them both and it’d be good to hear what some other folk see as pros and cons of them.

Maskah.1486:

I would agree, but again the enemy would literally have to stand in the fire field and there is no way you are going to blast as fast as a S/D which can do 25 might in under 8 second easy.

Staff’s usefulness in PvP comes from area control – if someone wants to contest the capture point, they have to stand in your AoE. If someone wants to come at you… they have to stand in your AoE.
Combined with, say, Arcane Brilliance and Arcane Wave, and leading in with an Eruption, this would definitely give very powerful might stacking combined with constant AoE damage ticks from the already excellent Lava Font.
That we have to swap out of Fire (or use our 6-9 skills) to get some utility is what stops this from being too powerful as it is – if we could suddenly also easily stack might while standing on a Lava Font, with utility skills reserved exclusively for defence, Staff Fire would be pretty broken.

Earth and Fire 1 follow the target and cannot be placed where you want it. Weakness makes no sense in earth.

The projectiles are terribly slow, yes, but as said above – your fields are likely to be over a capture point (or other desirable area), as is your target, so the projectiles would land in it anyway.
With regards to “weakness not making sense in earth”, would you not need to recover from getting hit in the chest with a rock? The condition fits well with the skill’s theme.
Why would this rock explode, though? Would you want Engi pistol #1 to get blast finishers, since those shots ‘explode’?

Though as a concession, the blast chance can be reduced if there actually turns out to be a balance issue.

Definitely not – auto-attacks are usually just time-killers anyway, while waiting for skills/attunements to come off cooldown. Making us rely on them for combo finishers, then making those combo finishers unreliable to use in fields, would be terrible. If I want to blast a water field it’s because I (or someone nearby) needs a heal, and I shouldn’t have to cross my fingers hoping that a blast procs.

Most of my point is this: blast finishers on autoattacks would be a terrible idea. They’d be far too powerful, able to proc several times in every field on the battlefield, and introducing a proc chance would just turn them into an RNG nightmare that wasn’t reliably useful.
Our autos could do with some improvement, yes – a projectile speed buff if nothing else – but turning them into spammable, powerful finishers isn’t the way to go about it.

The Ice Spike suggestion is sensible enough, and I’m all for that - but I’m pretty sure that either of the other two would be far too many blasts.
In Fire Attunement especially, we’d gain a regular, heavy-hitting blast finisher in an attunement that can maintain fire fields - with Persisting Flames to keep up the font, this would make it far too easy to maintain might and fury with just weapon skills.
Particularly if this is done on allies fighting 1200 units away from you.

Our Earth AA could definitely see some changes made to make it more useful, though I’m not really sure what - I don’t see a problem with a huge rock causing weakness when it hits a foe, but with the attack being as mediocre it is (especially accuracy-wise) the duration of the condition is far too short to make any meaningful difference to combat.

Okay, so let’s try to guess at which of our profession’s known bugs are among the “numerous bug fixes” coming our way, or place bets on which ones aren’t getting fixed.
So far the only one definitely getting changed is FGS#4, as far as I know?

The biggest thing that I’d like to see fixed is Lingering Elements, with persisting effects on all “while attuned to <element>” traits rather than just those 5 point minors.
This might make the new Earth GM worth taking (as defensive builds really need access to Water Attunement for its heals) and possibly open up a couple of other build options (making traits that increase damage while attuned much more useful, for a start).

Kinda doubtful that it’s on the way, but definitely a trait I’d love to get more practical use from.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Ugruk.4069:

It has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds, so when it procs from 1 regen source it doesnt from the rest, so you only lose 1 condition, but I think they will change that with the new patch

This should only apply in PvP currently, PvE should still have no cooldown associated with it.

We can hope that with the PvP revert (the ICD is getting removed), and with the rune update, it’ll be possible to proc CW on rune-based regen, too.

Oh, and sorry if you already knew all that - for some reason I read your post as if you didn’t understand autobalance.
At any rate, if you want more points and coin, rated matches are much better.

Sandie.1964:

So I have now had a chance to play spvp. WOW, the auto balance is flipping so fast that its hard to tell where you were or not. The points for either winning or loosing are terrible and the only loot you will see is when you rank up. If you wanted to just get rid of pvp why dont you just say so? I am really disappointed in ANET.

You were in hotjoin, which is the “very casual” side of PvP. Unranked matches, teams aren’t balanced on any kind of rating, you can enter or leave whenever you want without consequence.
Because of this, it has the poorest rewards, in rank points and in coin.

The ranked solo and team queues you can get to from the second tab in the PvP window – these have much better rewards, though right now they really suck:
- glory just got removed
- nothing has been added in its place
- we don’t get any kind of item reward for winning since Tuesday’s patch
- we don’t get an increased coin reward to make up for the removal of glory

So yeah, right now the only things to play for are rank points, leaderboard position, or because you just like to play. Hopefully the new rewards will be here within six months (or three years, or ever) so we can entice some new players into PvP again.

The dwayna runes don’t proc the trait, I’ve tested this before - runes are pretty inconsistent with functioning alongside traits.

It definitely worked with Inscription in the past, though - so I’ve got no idea what you’ve got going on there.

Ugruk.4069:

That’s why all the high ranked teams play one..... oops, guess not, show me the build and a video would love to see all that action and effectiveness in game

Just because Ele is able to do many roles well doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the best way to play - the metagame still rewards min/maxing as hard as you possibly can.
My point is that Ele *can* play as a jack of all trades pretty well, and at a reasonable level of competitive play (though not necessarily at the top, as you so helpfully point out) - and if you can’t hack it, it’s your abilities that are at fault, not the profession.

Srsly, l2p, then come back and whine about the *actual* problems the Ele has - or better still, actually discuss the profession rather than complain about how you’re terrible at it.

Ugruk.4069:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Ugruk.4069:

ThiBash.5634:

EvilSnowflake.1453:

In other words, if another class will always do a job better then the Elementalist, why would one ever be used?

Because they can do multiple jobs at the same time.

Lol you wish, you are the “jack of none”

Only some players are the “jack of none” not the profession.

Do you even spvp? Are you serious?

Hi, Staff Ele here, I’ve hit (and held for a couple of weeks) top 200 soloq with a hybrid build that could do a decent amount of everything. Consistently ranked within the top 1k, currently 525 or something (though right now I’m messing around with Zerker Staff and really enjoying wreaking havoc).

Come back and tell me that Ele is jack of none once you get up to, say, #600 in either leaderboard playing any build with any class. If you can’t do it with anything else, it’s unsurprising that you can’t succeed with Ele, and this is a l2p issue on your part rather than a problem with the Ele as a profession.

(Woo, I’m being an elitist kitten by spouting out my meaningless ranks! And feeding trolls who can’t even play well! Go me!)

hooma.9642:

cheese.4739:

hooma.9642:

how about communication (group) and training (wvw zerg)?

Because sometimes people want to play with strangers, or they don’t happen to have 4 other friends online, or the zerg ends up picking up some extra people who aren’t part of the guild?
Then there’s sPvP, with solo queue being entirely based around randomly matched teams who have pretty limited communication options (some pinging on map, or you can stop fighting to type in chat).

If every single interaction was within an organised group, I might be okay with expecting everyone to work out how to place fields to make best use of them – but there are too many situations that it’s just not possible in.

well i think its wrong. if u dont want some random dude destroying your combofields… well dont pick him. the same goes for solq and the difference to teamq. its natural that the teamplay should differ. i think its a question of skill and a great place to grow.. but yeah remove that too and at some point nobody needs groups anymore. welcome to pugwars 2

Y’wot? There will always be a need for less-organised groups – how is a game supposed to be social (y’know, massively multiplayer) if it doesn’t let people interact with each other?
And I really don’t understand how you say “don’t pick them” relates to soloq.
Are you saying that soloq should go away, so that we’re only left with teamq? This would mean that more people queued solo in teamq and you’d still have randoms paired with randoms out of necessity.

With regards to the blasting of multiple fields: what happens if there are more field types down than your combo requires? Will players get all the benefits of each field blasted, or some watered-down mix (which would still be infuriating for people trying to stack might or swiftness or get off a healing burst)? There’ll still be a need for priority of some sort (or stupidly powerful 5-field combos).

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Eh, warriors win 100% at jack of all trades at the moment, being able to deal decent damage with huge control and very good support.

Iunno – they’re capable of filling any role really bloody well, but they can’t do them all at once with one build.
Problems come in when you start getting things like hambow – which has both very high AoE damage and very good AoE control. Nobody should be as good as they are in more than one aspect of a build, without sacrificing some of the (also incredible) sustain that Wars still have.

Duran.3196:

3) you have support, but mostly for yourself, all ele support skills are pretty selfish

Also… what does this mean? Are you just talking about personal boons?

Nah, I was running 0/10/30/0/30 for a while in PvP, Valk amulet, Grove runes:

Good team support: boons from auras (traited air and earth adepts), Rock Solid giving stability on Earth attune, Elemental Attunement giving more boons. AoE heals that are pretty powerful (particularly if more than one finisher is used in a field).

Good damage: I can stack AoE might and fury on myself and others (so this falls under support, too), and have reasonable crit damage and good power - a bit low on precision, but should be maintaining fury so at something like 33% crit chance. Didn’t run Blasting Staff (preferring reduced cooldowns on Arcanes for all those finishers), but smart placement of AoE and use of snares does a decent job.

Good control: no extra control from traits, but Staff gets a field that chills, a ward, a knockback and a stunning field (with dazing strike as a bonus, since I ran the conjured Flame Axe). High mobility from two copies of Burning Retreat and great swiftness uptime.

Along with reasonable personal survivability through Diamond Skin (preventing most snares) and enough armour and heals to survive well against many foes - the only ones I reliably had trouble with were hambows (because kitten they’re just broken) and decent S/D thieves. I plan to try the build without DS at some point, though I’m not sure where best to chuck those 10 points.

So yeah, it’s possible to fill all roles as an Ele - it’s highly unlikely that another class will be able to bring that many options to the table at once while still performing reasonably well.
Yes, the damage is lower than someone else specced for damage, and personal survivability is lower than someone specced for bunkering - but the build can do both of those reasonably well, while also bringing a whole lot more to the table.

Hm, yeah, just locking out all skills would be much easier to implement and would solve your primary problem, this is true.

The "Jack of all Trades" is that the Ele can do all of those roles with one build, much better than anyone else trying to go hybrid. With my Staff I can do decent AoE damage, group boons/heals, hard and soft crowd control, and still have good mobility.
Another class can perform one or two of these roles rather better, but they’ll lose out significantly in the others.

Whether one can be effective with such a broad range of non-maxed abilities is really unclear - with the right balance, we could be great, but right now a hybrid Ele is hard to do at all well with.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Who would waste such a high cool down skill against a Hammer warrior? In pretty much EVERY situation other skills would be much better. You block a few attacks and then boom CC til you are dead. Yeah using Arcane Shield is a GREAT idea against a weapon with SO much access to CC, it is nothing but delaying what you know will happen.

The point is to block the CC, don’cha’know. Hit them with your own damage, or run away, rather than get stunned in place.
Other skills, such as Armour of Earth, may also be useful in such a situation… but some people prefer the roles that blocks fulfil (completely mitigating damaging hits) to those that protection/stability do (damage reduction, immunity to all CC).
People play with different skills – you can’t use Arcane Shield, apparently, but other players can and do.

I would take fighting Melee Vs Melee every day of the week, i would happily use Magnetic Aura to force them into changing weapons. That is what i need, fighting Melee Vs Range is just not something that any Melee wants and to force them either into stop attacking so i can get close or swapping to melee weapons and going Melee Vs Melee would be perfect. Does that mean i would win? of course not, but it gives a much better chance than trying to fight knockbacks, stealth and kiting.

However, as has come up many times before: in sPvP, everything is melee vs melee, when it comes to 1v1 play, since it’s necessary to contest capture points. Ranger shortbow is just their most effective weapon, with strong condition application and regular hits to proc their spirits’ effects.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Hello, we are Ele. We have the WORST build diversity of ALL the classes. So we couldn’t make that any worse as its already the worst it can be.

Persisting Flames
Fresh Air
Two build-defining traits, regularly taken, that require 30 points investment into their trait line. There are multiple ways to use them (right now I’m 30/20/0/0/20 for zerker Staff). Boom! Build diversity. The attunement cooldowns change and general improvements to fire/air lines have aided diversity significantly.
Note that these builds are so much more successful than what you’re sure you need, because:
1) Ele is not a good bunker, as we’re inherently squishy. We make up for this with utility and damage potential – if you really want to bunker down, roll a Guard (or maybe a Warrior or Engi if you want to switch things up a bit).
2) They actually deal any damage – if you spend all your time going “ooh I want to be survivablez” you’re never going to kill anything, and you’ll lose most attrition fights.

Arcane Shield for example is WASTED on Thief who are in stealth because blocks don’t remove them from stealth

So mitigating that Backstab, and letting you know you just got attacked, is a waste? Do you actually pay no attention whatsoever? And if you’re in the habit of popping your stunbreak/active defence while not actually in combat, maybe this is why the cooldowns feel so long…

Shocking Aura on the other hand is VERY useful.

Yes, yes it is – and it’s already accessible on a weapon… and would become more accessible if GoEP gained auras.

want to Block 3 attacks from that ranger? why block 3 attacks when you can reflect his attacks back at him for 5 seconds with Magnetic Aura….

Again: one of our weaponsets can do this already, and if GoEP were changed to auras and on your bar, you could do it from other weaponsets anyway.

What happens if you come up against a Hammer Warrior with stability? Suddenly your Shocking Aura is utterly useless… but a block will save your hide. Want to res an ally against someone with CC? Blocks > auras against most CC skills. What about that AoE on the ground? Can’t aura your way out of that. What if your Ranger friend knows how to weapon swap and starts hitting you with their Greatsword? Magnetic Aura only works if they stick to projectile attacks, which they shouldn’t be doing.

The auras are great utility, but they are not worth ruining Arcane Shield for. If any buff were to be made to the skill, I’d like it to be the addition of a blast finisher when the shield was broken, adding a small reason for foes to leave the shield to expire naturally. Its cooldown is long, but if you don’t waste it, you can (as mentioned by people above) then finish that important channel or survive your opponent’s burst when you ordinarily would not have done.

I’m still waiting for you to outline a build that effectively uses GoEP as it is, by the way.
I’m pretty certain that there isn’t one – I know I tried to get it to work for long enough.

Yamsandjams.3267:

As such, perhaps the solution is not to somehow disable weapon swap, but change the nature of the renewed focus ability so that it behaves like elixir S and mist form. That is, it’s a non-channeled ability that put you in a non-cancellable “mist form” like state that recharges your virtues at the end of it.

However such a transform would lock players out of all instant-cast skills, including the activation of any Virtues which are currently charged.
I’m of the opinion that allowing weapon swap while channeling non-weapon skills would be better – I don’t think either of my points above would cause serious problems, and it’d be interesting to see what folks came up with if allowed to trigger sigils while channeling.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Elemental Power is good
[…]
too many of the Glyph traits are unattainable for most builds.

So what, you don’t want to change a Glyph, then you say that Glyphs are untraitable? Find me a build that someone is currently using GoEP in, traited or not, then get back to me with more nonsense reasons to change a working skill (Arcane Shield – srsly people are using it and like its functionality we keep telling you) when there are more suitable and currently less useful skills we could change instead.
Glyphs lack decent traits, and are generally underwhelming, yes – but saying “oh no I don’t use these trait lines so we shouldn’t make that skill type useful” won’t solve that problem in any way.
And again: Glyphs are the skill type that change their effects based on your attunement. Arcanes don’t, Conjures don’t, Cantrips don’t. Such an effect belongs on a Glyph and definitely doesn’t belong on an Arcane.

The meta’s shifted away from “you have to be x/x/x/20/30”, by the way. It’s been that way for a while – and insisting we fit all suggested changes to fit into your nice little world of just-one-build is a terrible plan for build diversity.

Ash why don’t you even read the kitten post?

It fits better as a Glyph, there are fewer arguments to be made *for* the GoEP (srsly, people like shield, it’s actually useful, and taking away those blocks would really bloody hurt), and the mechanics of Glyphs fit with attunement-based effects (whereas Arcanes are very definitely standalone spells that *don’t* depend on your attunement).

Argh, stupid forum bug, logged me out again. Here’s the gist of what I’d typed:

1) Arcane Shield: don’t even think about it. It’s a great utility, bringing stunbreak, blocks, and not interrupting your channel.

2) I’ve seen the auras-on-stunbreak suggested before, however, and in a way that fits with the chosen skill type: Glyph of Elemental Power.
Since it was never designed as a stunbreak, the Glyph is... pretty weird. You’re expected to pop it before entering combat, to proc the condition effects, but then you can’t use it when it’s needed. Combine this with the ICD and low proc chance /for/ the conditions, and it becomes an incredibly underwhelming skill.
Since Glyphs behave as different skills depending on your attunement, they’re the ideal candidates for the elemental auras, which are also primarily defensive so go with a stunbreak nicely.
It’d be a nice improvement to Glyphs, and they definitely need a bunch of nice improvements to be useful.

The only classes who can weapon swap without interrupting skills are Elementalists and Engineers, and this is because they’re expected to combo together a variety of skills from different places (attunements or kits) to be of any use. After learning to play on Ele, it took a while to get used to not swapping while channeling for my Mesmer.

While it makes a lot of sense that players can’t weapon swap while casting skills bound to their weapon, I do agree that utilities and elites shouldn’t be cancelled in the same way... but there are a couple of issues:

1) instant-cast abilities on alternate weaponsets - would these be usable while channeling after a swap?
2) on-swap sigils, or other sigil effects that can trigger mid-channel. Weapon-based traits that can kick in.

I can’t think of any potentially overpowered combinations right now, and there may not actually *be* any such setups, but the interactions between weapons, or weapon swaps, and the skill being channeled do need to be taken into account.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I have never noticed it launching anyone without me using skill #3

Nope, the skills are definitely seperate – skill #3 adds an additional knockback, caused by “debris”, that is fired at your target if they’re in range. If you watch the skill’s animation, you’ll sometimes see flying cows and things in the air – only after casting #3.
Skills #1 and #2 also only activate when you select them, and fire out projectiles (bouncing lightning or dust devils) just after each tick – but you’ll always be launching every 3 second tick, unless your foe has stability or you are blinded.

Mystogan.4157:

I thought all auras did work? I dont think they last long enough for auramancers. I loved auras but i tought the duration was lacking

The auras from your weapon skills or traits are shared, as well as those from traited effects (fire shield on signet use, or shocking aura when disabled), but those gained from leaping through fire or ice fields, or from rune sets (currently either a fire shield at 80% health or a magnetic aura at 20%, from runes of the fire and earth).

Combo and rune auras *do* trigger the adept auramancy traits in air and earth, just not Powerful Aura; with regards to the sharing trait:
- runes are probably an oversight (runes of dwayna don’t trigger Cleansing Water, for another example of failed interaction with traits)
- for auras it might be a duct-tape solution, to stop people from double-stacking frost auras on their allies by blasting ice fields, iunno. We have a few different leap finishers that we currently can’t share auras from, anyway.

EDIT: right now I actually think staff users are in the best place for group auramancy... and this is without running Powerful Aura. The fury, swiftness and protection from blasting an ice field multiple times can be helpful, but it comes at the expense of might-stacking if you use up all your finishers.
One possible option would be to bring a second player for an ice field - maybe a frost trap ranger... or an S/D Ele as the auramancer to blast in the staff’s fields? Either one requires deliberate group synergy, and iunno if it’d be at all worth the investment.

At any rate, in PvE the main boon wanted will be Fury, and this is currently most reliably provided by Persistent Flames - and comes with all the might stacking anyway. Auramancy is only likely to be useful if a build can’t afford to go 30 deep into fire magic, but is already taking 10 points in air and earth - maybe something fresh-airy, iunno. I ran 0/10/30/0/30 for Diamond Skin, the boons were pretty nice.

While it would be nice to have more useful GM traits, I don’t think this works.

I’d much prefer to see Powerful Aura working with all auras (combos/runes in particular) so we can mess around with being decent Auramancers again.

Did you know that having hp and armour is passive play now? I mean, folks don’t even have to think about them, they’re just part of their build. No thought goes into them whatsoever.

Shockwave.1230:

The FGS is used as part of Dungeon speed runs and destroying objects quickly in WvW and sPvP. They are significant parts of the game, and would have been dealt with if it were a bug. While you claim it’s a bug, other people claim it’s a feature.

Along the same lines… how long was the exploit on Foefire/Kyhlo known for, before it got fixed? And why does the same exploit still exist on Skyhammer? Totally a feature, and we can definitely rely on quick hotfixes to bugs. Yeah.

isolatedchimp.2510:

I like cheese.

Glad to hear I have a good reputation.

I notice that a few people mention auramancy being terrible on Staff - this isn’t true, and we actually have two auras available (and can trigger one multiple times):

- Magnetic Aura, skill 3 in Earth Attunement. Of course.
- Frost Aura, by blasting in or leaping through that lovely ice field.

If you blast a few times in the ice field, you’ll get several applications of the auramancy boons, and (possibly more importantly) you’ll give them to allies nearby. If you build for combo finishers (bring Brilliance, Wave, Evasive Arcana, Conjured Flame Axe for reliable ones, or the Lightning Hammer for a "do I feel lucky" blast in the AA chain) you can get pretty high protection uptime and maintain swiftness and fury just from doing this.

I’m considering going 20 water again (not done it for a while) and traiting the cooldown of those fields to see how it works - but that can come when I’m done messing about as a full zerk (and surviving without any cantrips, by the way).

hooma.9642:

how about communication (group) and training (wvw zerg)?

Because sometimes people want to play with strangers, or they don’t happen to have 4 other friends online, or the zerg ends up picking up some extra people who aren’t part of the guild?
Then there’s sPvP, with solo queue being entirely based around randomly matched teams who have pretty limited communication options (some pinging on map, or you can stop fighting to type in chat).

If every single interaction was within an organised group, I might be okay with expecting everyone to work out how to place fields to make best use of them – but there are too many situations that it’s just not possible in.

Okay so, this may work... but I just checked out the conjured Flame Axe’s fire fields. They don’t work with this trait.

It may only be meant to work on standard weapon skills, but in that case I’d like to see the tooltip updated to reflect this. I’m submitting a bug report the now.

Spiuk.8421:

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

It took them until release of GW2 to fix the Exhaustion issue in GW1 Ele

Removing great mechanics from the game is called "fixing" now?

They didn’t remove it, they just reworked it (some skills were changed to only apply 5 temporary energy loss), and added new synergies between a bunch of mediocre Ele skills (some skills gained new effects if you were overcast (the new name for exhaustion) and some skills gained other interactions).
I really loved what I started running with AP as the elite, and Meteor Shower/Glyph of Sacrifice, since I could reliably nuke a whole JQ node in one short chain - but by the time this patch came out, gw1 PvP was already dying so I didn’t get to see how useful it was against a wide playerbase.

Asuna.6591:

I just have one question about the Arcane Lightning trait. It does not have a cool down ?

It doesn’t, no – but the effect doesn’t stack, as it says in the tooltip, so if you use an Arcane skill while there’s still time left on the buff you’ll ‘lose’ however many seconds it is.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

protection

One thing I’m considering is sticking to my current utility setup (with that super fun Lava Axe – ta again for bringing it up), and keeping 20 points in Earth… or even just 10, and using Soothing Wave.

Staff gets access to two auras at present, and can stack the Zephyr’s Boon and Elemental Shielding boons by blasting an ice field several times… but if the leap finisher from Flame Axe is brought along, that’s a fire or frost aura right there, bringing with it some more protection.

Since Frozen Ground is an instant-cast (while not channeling another skill), it’s very quick to blast in to gain that fury, swiftness and protection – and having that source of protection in the build might free up the Major Master Arcana trait slot for high endurance regeneration, or maybe even Arcane Retribution for a load of condi damage.

The vitality and healing loss will affect survivability somewhat, and swapping out runes or a couple of armour pieces might be a plan (which will have less dps impact when crit damage is changed, I expect), but a little more condi damage and toughness, along with potentially permanent fury/swiftness and high protection uptime, could really help.

A quick draft of what I mean - I’ve not touched the gear side of things, because I need to get to bed, but the skills and traits apart from that 10 in water are what I’ll be trying out.

PS: ooh, Arcane Lightning is 15 seconds of buff? I thought it was only 10! Much easier to maintain, in that case.

Oh, bonus condi damage while under <health threshold> is a pretty good one, aye - if you heal up, you lose a chunk of dps. Hm.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

cheese.4739:

If you were using multiple Arcanes for burst, without Arcane Mastery, you might lose the benefit since the trait doesn’t stack – but with your heal being Brilliance, and with traited Arcane cooldowns, you’ll probably have higher uptime on AL than the time you spend in Air attunement.

I think you meant AL (in place of Arcane Mastery) but I can definitely understand where this argument is coming from. AL will almost certainly have a 90% uptime, at least. So it’s basically a tossup between 10% more critical damage (all attunements), or 10% more overall damage (Air only). It’s a tough call. I think either can work.

Another point for Air Training: It also works with meteor shower. Switch into air during the cast to get 10% more damage.

Thanks for watching, Cheese. As always, your insights are appreciated

No, I meant Arcane Mastery – your heal and other arcanes recharge slightly faster, so you can cast them more frequently and bring up AL more regularly.
Pre-Brilliance, you’d be much more likely to cast all arcanes at once

At any rate, I might try this out in the next few days, or at least steal your ideas/suggestions and add them to my own build – I’m a bit bored of getting called a noob for running Diamond Skin (by minion necroes, decap engineers and spirit rangers), and my PvP MMR has been kinda ruined by 4v5s over the past week so I haven’t got much to lose if it turns out it’s not for me! ^__^

Oh, one other thing – Lingering Elements was only fixed for the 5-point minors, right? I’m pretty sure that Air Training and similar still don’t linger, even though to make use of any you need to use trait slots, and to get more than two at once you kinda have to cycle all your elements and be locked out of most of your skills for 10s…

The conjures would need competely rebalanced, were they to become weapon skills - and I wouldn’t really like that, since they now all have their uses in certain builds (apart from arguably the Earth Shield - has anyone used this on a map that isn’t Skyhammer yet? I’ve toyed with it a few times but keep giving up).

For new weapons for Ele, I’ve gotta say that I want to get an elemental torch - though there already exist skills that would suit the weapon, on other sets. Boo.

Ulion: Flame Axe is great for stacking might, with fire fields and a low-cooldown blast finisher, as well as for some leap-finisher combos (as Staff Ele this can be a fire aura, frost aura, dazing strike or extra heal from my own fields) and the mobility from Burning Retreat. I currently find all of its skills really useful. KrazyFlyinChicken has a video somewhere about its combos, and how to use them.

EDIT: Aha! Video is here, a post containing it is here.

The most powerful utilities for nuking siege in WvW are the Frost Bow, as mentioned above, and Glyph of Storms in Air Attunement (the Lightning Storm from it does 36 hits, which is much more useful than one huge one against the heavily-armoured siege).

Water 2 (Ice Spike) is pretty terrible for dealing damage since it has a long cast and long delay after the cast - like many of the Staff skills, it’s useful for area denial/pressure, and will punish anyone who sticks around, but isn’t a reliable land.

A tip for the bloodlust sigil: take two weapons, one with the sigil and one without (replace it with Battle or Force or something). As soon as you have 25 stacks of bloodlust, and are out of combat, swap out your weapon - you’ll keep the stacks but be able to make use of the new weapon’s sigil too.

rabidsmiles.5926:

thanks for the answers…figured it was the designer’s way of forcing us to spend valuable points on useless things. Yay -.-

/sigh

It’s not useless if you don’t bring Elemental Attunement, I guess – but EA gives you swiftness on attune, which completely overrides the 10% benefit.

Still less terrible than Arcane Precision. We should campaign (again) to get our boon-based-damage-increase trait (currently Bountiful Power, Water 25) put into the boon-duration line like it should be. And to get something support-oriented for Water 25 (maybe even Powerful Auras, since there are auras on every weaponset and it’s really not worth taking over Cleansing Water right now – not when auras from runes and combos don’t proc the effects, and with a max of 2 weapon-based auras that will work with it).

Vash Past.4385:

Replace the ‘Persisting Flames’ train in fire (11) with ’Wizard’s Fire’

Wizards Fire: Burning damage is doubled.

Boom. Over. Done. Elementalists can now focus on burning as their primary attack, because elemental wizards should be able to burn people to cinders if that’s their thing. Burning, which is stacked in time, could still be easily removed, and people would remove large stacks because not removing them would be bad otherwise. Condition removal would be more important in matches. Elementalists in this trait line would have to use 30 points in fire and GM trait to achieve this(and of course would still be Ultra-Squishy as usual), so balanced easily.

Also, they could probably achieve this with like 5 lines of code, so it could be implemented like yesterday.

If you want to be a condition elementalist, +1 this post and ask for Wizard’s Fire!

This sounds insteresting… but in the Power and Condi Duration fire line I can see it being hella powerful in Power-based burst with perma-burning to supplement damage.
Burning traits wouldn’t thematically fit anywhere else, however.

The only way I can really see such a trait working is if it’s conditional. Double burning damage if suffering from no other conditions (so it’s easy to cleanse and you can’t soft-CC them)? Double burning damage while within a range of <600?> of your target? Double burning damage on the third Sunday of each month?

Should Scotland be an independent country?

And one step further:

Strang.8170:

It´s bit of an odd kind of stability being small bursts of it (very hard to work with sometimes), but hardly matters since eles are one of the classes that need the stability least.
One of the better uses i´ve found for this is lengthening stabilities teammates provide.

Its best uses are stomping (including helping allies to stomp) or channeling MS or ER - though the stability popping through regular attunement rotation is pretty nice when it negates an engi’s insta-CC.

It took me about 6 months (maybe actually just 4) to get my GWAMM and full HoM, but that was when the economy was still reasonable to sell things in* – I expect Obsidian Armour is ridiculously expensive now if you don’t solo-farm the Underworld yourself (or beg the materials off a friend who has a bunch of now-near-useless ecto stacks!), though at least many miniatures are likely to be very cheap (if anyone’s still selling the things) since a great many players have been around for 5+ years.

I recommend you check out wiki talk pages for missions if you struggle to get them done as a single-player party – there are number of very useful builds listed on them.

*also, I was unemployed and putting a lot of time to the game – and didn’t have access to gw2 yet

You’re using Blasting Staff. It’s a bug that I’ve definitely seen mentioned before.

Check the duration without Blasting Staff?