Guild Wars 2

Mist Form previously did allow the use of skills, I believe. It was nerfed along with so many other things when D/D eles got wiped from the face of competitive gw2.

And Diamond Skin is most definitely not a joke, but it’s not a trait you can just chuck into your build and expect to instantly pwn condi users with - you’ve got to make some effort to reduce incoming damage and keep yourself healed up, and a well-timed Flesh Golem Charge is difficult to deal with, but these are reasons the trait can exist at all - if it was guaranteed 100% immunity to folks running primarily condition damage builds, it would most definitely be OP.

I run DS right now, on Staff, and am really pleased with how it works - I can still die to condi users in 1v1s if they outplay me or if I mess up, and DS does very little to counter a primarily power-based build (though it often helps stop the initial snare), but it means that I’m not downed the moment a terror necro sees me, and it really helps against decap engis when they can’t immobilise or apply any damaging condi to me.

If you’re taking that 10% damage from every condi user you meet, you’re either:
- not actually running DS and talking out your kitten based on vague assumptions
- running DS but not building around it, even though it’s pretty definitely a build-defining trait
- running DS, building around it, but not using your build well

So um, why do the chests we can buy from vendors still drop glory boosters instead of gear/dye/finishers?

We’re expected to spend glory, but one of the ways to spend glory has a relatively high chance (at least one every few chests) of dropping a glory booster, and there’s no real way to use up these glory boosters at this rate.

Why have the boosters not been removed from chests, giving us better access to the rewards, if we’re actually expected to use them all up?

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I just wanted to chime in about a common misconception: Diamond Skin does not promote passive play.

It is, on the contrary, quite active. You actively have to make it a point to try to stay above the 90% threshold, and your opponent actively tries to whittle you out of that 90% threshold to again be able to apply conditions. This is nothing like Healing Signet, which does promote passive play, whereby Healing Signet simply does the same thing regardless and has no play or counterplay at all (at the moment). Diamond Skin invokes a lot of play and counterplay, and although it’s rudimentary in the form of “stay above a certain amount of life”, it’s still very much active.

That’s all. Carry on.

This is only a thing against hybrid condi/power, which is rare enough that it isn’t much of an issue. The problem is that technically eles don’t have enough healing to keep health above 90% for any pure power build, and any pure condition build doesn’t have enough power damage to take you below 90%.
That’s why it’s passive. It either works without you doing anything, or just doesn’t work whether you do anything or not. This would be entirely different if hybrid was meta, but sadly hybrid builds are few and far between and aren’t particularly viable as you generally gain more through specialization.

Even against pure condi users, it’s necessary to put in some effort to maintain that 90% – the only setup that I can probably passively outheal is a s/f-staff necro with spite, wall, walk and plague form, and even then a few life blasts is enough to get me below that barrier (and death shroud has that handy fear to stop the ele from immediately healing up again).

Oh, cool, thanks for that - clearly I’d missed that post.

I’d consider using it again maybe... but burst group cleansing doesn’t really sound all that useful to me, when I’d be likely to get focused quickly anyway. I guess I’ll wait and see what else the patch does to us.

Then the problem is probably your setup, skill level... and that new PvP players do seem to be ranked too high for matchmaking.

In water attunement you get passive regen from the 5 point minor trait, but the heal-on-dodge comes from Evasive Arcana, a 30 point trait in the Arcana line.

I think you’re confusing WvW with sPvP.

In World versus World, all player characters are scaled up to level 80 - and if your gear is underlevelled, it really shows. Structured PvP (the trophy icon on the top row will open its menu) is where all characters are given equal stats - to get better stats in WvW you need to level up there and in PvE.

Elementalists aren’t in the /best/ place for PvP/WvW, and you probably need to know the class better than, say, a warrior does, to perform well, but we’re certainly not useless - but the majority of your problem here definitely sounds like it’s upscaling, while the foes you’re getting killed by are natural lvl80s.

The point of the heal is that it’s got a slightly higher risk and a much higher reward, Malthias - if it were to become as powerful as other heals at long range, it’d need a 1.5s cast time or 30s cooldown, since it’s got that delicious blast finisher (and happens to be critical damage as an Arcane, too).

FYI, you shouldn’t rely on any info in the ’leaked’ patch notes - we know some things are planned changes, because devs had previously mentioned them elsewhere, but the official stance is that this leak is largely made up.

One important thing about Cleansing Water: it has a 5 second cooldown in sPvP, meaning that you can ’waste’ regeneration applications - particularly from Healing Rain, since it ticks every 3 seconds.

It’s still a powerful group condition removal trait, but it’s really quite a nuisance to use, and doesn’t have the burst condition removal that we might build around.

Also, I’m not sure if this has been fixed yet (I’m guessing not) but when I tried running Dwayna runes when first playing with Cleansing Water, the regeneration it granted didn’t proc the trait - and chances are, the regen it gave you would come within 5s of another source anyway.

Another agreement from me that the orb /being/ a transform would be useful - with all movement speed traits negated too, a core set of skills, and (if possible) set health and armour levels.

Those with blocks would still have a slight advantage for channeling to pick up the orb, but the current problem of some classes just being plain inferior would be dealt with.

The only times I’ve ever seen someone /use/ a transform while carrying the orb is when I’ve tornado’d myself - and that’s not all that useful.

Powerful Aura doesn’t share auras from combos or the Arane Resurrection trait - the only ones it shares are weapon auras, or those from the Fire’s Embrace or Tempest Defence traits.

A signet-based auramancer /might/ be useful, if you regularly activate your signets, but with the way traits are right now you can’t take more than one aura-buffing trait along with signet Mastery (and if you go for Signet Mastery + Elemental Shielding, you miss out on Rock Solid, which is arguably much better party support).

The other aura you share as staff, by blasting ice fields, doesn’t make use of PA - so as KFC says, it’s using a bunch of traits for one 30s cooldown skill.

While we have auras so spread out on weapons, with no utilities that grant them, aura traits very hard to bring together and combo-auras not working with PA... I don’t see the trait being at all useful. You’re better being more selfish with auras, sharing only that frost aura from your ice field.

Oh, though re: arguably the weakest... try telling the commune points in Silent Storm that MA is poor compared to the others.

Ygritte.1783:

Skyhammer can be fun actually if your team has some brain and knows how to use/avoid CC’s. Honestly I like this map it is something new and makes you modernize your build a bit.

Problems with skyhammer related to your post:

- CC/stability are not even slightly balanced between classes, and nor should they be – some will specialise in control, some will be better at dealing straight damage, this keeps things interesting. The map ignores damage a lot of the time, and just rewards those with high numbers of CC skills.

- The map plays differently enough from the others, and has such an emphasis on CC and stability, that many players prefer to run completely different builds on it than on other maps – and we don’t have any way to change our trait allocation while in a map, so have to miss out on pre-match meeting by resetting traits before entering the game.

We all know how popular Skyhammer is, with its quirky mechanics and totally balanced combat between different classes – it really belongs in team queue, most of the community agrees.

So why is Raid on the Capricorn, with its fun and varied underwater combat, not in the soloq rotation? Or the teamq rotation? Hell, add glass panels to the pirate ship and it’ll likely win awards for innovation!

Wait, the thief trait actually does break the caps? I’m pretty doubtful of this - the 50% would presumably only be to completely counteract cripple and mitigate chill, as other >33% buffs function (One With Air, Mist Form, Super Speed). You got a source for this, ens?

The highest boost of all your boosts is taken, but movement speed increase is capped at 33% anyway.

This means that 66% speed increase is generally not noticeable compared to the 33% from Swiftness... but if you’re chilled, it’ll completely cancel the chill’s slowing effect, while swiftness will only partially mitigate it.

Columbo.5924:

You are often better off using a different trait in PvP as well (for example lower cantrip recharge). Regeneration uptime is already really high if you run a boon duration build with elemental attunement, so the additional regeneration won’t matter as much in PvP. And in PvP this often does not trigger the cleansing water trait either due to its unpredictability and the internal cooldown of cleansing water. Sooting wave can even become detrimental when you need to clear a critical condition/stack of conditions and switch to water just to find out that this trait has set cleansing water on cooldown a few seconds before to clear a 2 seconds blind.

I’m running this trait in PvP because I’m also running Diamond Skin - and since condi necro will often spec for high crit chance (to proc condi applications) but have low power, the scepter autoattack tends to heal as much damage as it deals to me by triggering regens.

Cleansing Water really does need its ICD removed to be useful in PvP at all - far too many of our regeneration applications have to happen within five seconds of each other, such as those granted by Healing Rain or if you switch into Water Attunement while casting Glyph of Elemental Harmony and proc your Elemental Attunement.

Yeah, in PvE you’re probably best taking Water VI, Vital Striking, which gives 10% more damage while above 90% health.

As I’m running with three arcane AoE skills, for group content (dungeons/fractals) I often instead take Water II, Shard of Ice, which applies 3 stacks of vulnerability to foes hit by Arcane skillls and gives a little more group dps when other folks aren’t stacking vulnerability on foes - but I’ve honestly not run the numbers, so if you’re running with more damage-oriented gear you may be better being selfish and taking VI.

Zuik.7158:

Was told to post this here.

Attunements are counted as skills, which is the reason chill affects them, something which is quite frustrating for many elementalists.

So if these are attunement based skills why aren’t the -20% attunement skill cd traits affecting the cd of attunements?

I’m not suggesting this would be smart balancing but it’s clearly overlooked and gives little justification for the situation of attunements with chill atm.

I do believe there will be some regrets however if attunements no longer count as skill casts. You must realise we would lose a large portion of healing from signet of restoration.

Oh, I /like/ this argument for “they’re our weapon swap mechanic, not individual skills”.

Getting the 20% reduced recharge on attunements themselves would be a significant buff to the not-currently-incredible Alacrity traits, but would mean they were skills and so affected by chills.
If we don’t get the 20% reduced recharge, the swaps must be weapon swaps, not spells tied to our weapon skills, and so shouldn’t be affected by chill.

silvermember.8941:

There is no such things as PvE meta.

Anything and everything can work in PvE.

I feel like meta gets thrown around too much.

There are definitely PvE metas; people will always look for the most efficient setup to run a dungeon or event chain, though the current state of the game means that this is almost universally “go zerk and learn when to dodge”.

It’s entirely possible to map open-world PvE without any trait points allocated, and with random utilities selected for you, but this doesn’t mean that more thought-out builds can’t do it easier, better, and more efficiently.

While the PvE meta isn’t as ‘important’ as the WvW/PvP meta(s), it’s still relevant with regards to group content or general ease of play – but just as you need to use a different playstyle when roaming in WvW to mapping in PvE, you also need to play differently when doing certain areas/objectives in PvE, like by not blindspamming dredge*, or not looking for damage bonuses from precision/crit dmg when fighting static ‘epic’ foes, or running with high toughness/vit/heals/cleanse when visiting orr only to gather crafting materials.

*I’ll admit that it took me /far/ too long to cotton on to this, and I’d struggled my way through a large amount of dredge content before realising that I could have a much easier time by just focusing on killing the things.

Okay, how about this: I have now finished all of the Lion’s Arch living story achivements, I have tagged enough foes and participated enough to get enough loot to get my backpiece up to ascended level, and done this without dying unless I either stopped paying attention, took on more foes than I reasonably should have alone (they’re called group events for a reason), or got stuck in the terrain (which probably counts as not paying attention, since I usually got stuck by falling through holes in bridges).

I don’t die noticeably more often than my allies in dungeons or fractals, and I’m pleased with how I perform in PvP.

I can do it, other folks can do it; why can’t you?

Xyonon.3987:

However yes I also think upscaling the mobs in LA is just a bad joke. “We have no idea how to make them harder, LETS MAKE THEM LV 85!!!” … srsly :/ I was happy when I saw the NC mobs that dodged, revived allies and did something smart. We need more of those instead of “more dmg, more hp, much level, wow” mobs…

The reason for the huge numbers of upleveled mobs is that there are huge numbers of players too… the problem lies with trying to make zomg hueg epic events that take more than 10s for a large group to complete.

I really like the open world that we have, and appreciate what they’re trying to do with the living story, but for interesting combat we really need small groups, such as instances – and preferably not just several small events that can fail due to one other small group messing up (as could happen in the Marionette fight if one platform had someone kiting boss 2 in hueg circles).

Okay, it’s just l2p issues on the part of OP, who continues to just really want to get annoyed at people for not hating on their class.

If you’re struggling in dungeons, you’re not playing builds right or you’re not stacking well, so it’s l2p.

If you’re struggling in open-world PvE events, or zerg-tastic content like LA right now, you’re either: running builds that are far too glassy for the content; not fighting at an appropriate range; or not backing off when you should and are just trying to facetank. Also l2p.

And with regards to ’nobody else gets aggro in such situations’:

- dungeons: stacking. If you run away from the stack and pull all the aggro, it’s your fault if you die and it’s your fault if your group kicks you for messing things up. For certain foes, mostly bosses, their aggro isn’t really understood and they may pick folks at random or due to dps ability or due to vit or toughness. Do you know what else your group is running and exactly how the boss decides who to attack?
- zerg-based content: culling. You can’t /see/ what everyone else has aggro from, though they might get downed less than you because they’re simply playing better.

ElexOrieN.2130:

cheese.4739:

you’re too busy checking to see if anyone else is getting damaged, and not paying attention to the AoE you’re standing right in the middle of.

Etherblades and Molten Alliance are the ones that one-hit me out of nowhere and they do that without AOE. And i do pay attention to my character and my skills etc. but i also see the others around me. It’s called "paying attention" surely you heard of that before.

cheese.4739:

srsly, just get an exotic pvt set for such events, and hit as many enemies as possible

And hit like a wet noodle. Don’t you read the guides? Glassy zerker is how the elementalist is played in pve if you don’t run full DPS you’re playing the elementalist wrong. Toughness and Vitality does not kill enemies faster.

Okay so you just cherry pick things you feel you can directly argue against, and don’t even acknowledge that part of your problem might be not seeing other folks getting aggro due to culling?

Well, I guess I should reply to these two pices:

With regards to ’paying attention’: those two ’points I made’ were in jest, which I thought would be clear from the next section starting with ’And a couple of more serious ones...’.

And on the pvt/zerker/’meta’ issue: you are in open-world zerg based content. Your individual damage is negligible - doing 50% more damage yourself is watered down significantly by the 50 other people there.
Against world bosses like teq, your ’meta builds’ are actually pointless - you can’t crit against such things, so you’re wasting your two minor stats by running zerk.

The ’meta builds’ that you’re running are the dungeon meta, not open-world PvE - and if you can’t survive while in an organised group in dungeons (which is what such builds are designed for), then it’s you that’s playing badly, not the class that’s inherently flawed.

tl;dr: use pvt (or something else with any survival stats) for open world, zerg-based PvE, learn the content that meta builds are designed for, and apply them there instead of just thinking that they’ll work well in every situation.

ElexOrieN.2130:

I run zerker and i’m glassy as can be, so no i’m not tanky it can not be be my armor rating.

Well, this explains why absolutely everything kills you in one hit.

I’m pretty sure that the problem here is selective reporting - you’re not experiencing the aggro/incoming damage as another class, so you assume it must only be Elementalists who are targeted.

A couple of ideas as to what’s going on:
- you’re too busy checking to see if anyone else is getting damaged, and not paying attention to the AoE you’re standing right in the middle of.
- your glassy build means you go down after the first attack, and you can’t tell what’s happening to other players due to the blurred red downed effects.

And a couple of more serious ones:
- in huge events, there are so many attacks/AoEs going about that of course some of them are going to hit you - I mentioned this last post.
- culling. This is a technique used to increase framerates, by not drawing everything in the area all the time. In zerg-based content, this means that very frequently you’ll only be able to see the enemies who you’re interacting with (attacking/being attacked by), and you actually have no idea how other players are doing and who else has aggro from other enemies. You feel like everything is going after you, but every other player experiences things pretty similarly.

The culling is probably the main issue, along with your running full glass for events that are just great big tagging competitions (srsly, just get an exotic pvt set for such events, and hit as many enemies as possible (if relevant to the event) - you’ll last much longer and get more loot due to not lying on the floor). Save your glass set for situations requiring skilled combat.

Another note: the steal skill from Elementalists is Ice Shard Stab, which is 10 seconds of chill from a class that can only access the condition while fighting against Elementalists, and which is barely affected by the condition itself. Thieves are trouble enough for Elementalists without using this condition, and an out-of-nowhere immobilise immediately followed by a long chill is very serious shutdown (and costs 0 initiative once they’re in pre-combat stealth).

For those arguing that, since traited swapping of attunements can proc various effects, they should be counted as skills more than weapon swaps and so be affected by chill, here are some traits that proc on weapon swap:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Rage
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Power
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tail_Wind
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Furious_Grip
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quick_Pockets
Should Warriors who go into the Discipline tree have their weapon swaps affected by chill? What about Rangers who go into Skirmishing?

Weapon swaps shouldn’t be affected by chill, and attunements are the Elementalist’s weapon swap mechanic.

ElexOrieN.2130:

Fanta.8049:

I though u talking about Pvp or 1v1 or something like that .Ele is fine in Pve ,friend , running with zerg ,dodge ,heal ,bla bla ,i can survive well with my ele .My current pve build is 0/30/0/20/20 s/d ,zerg trinket and knight armor (expect head is zerk ) rune is scholar ,sigil is 5% crit and bloodlust . try to kite 1 or 2 or 3 at the same time if u full glass

Welp here come the “my ele is fine” fanboys again… -_-
Ele is a bad joke in PVE right now, unable to survive due to the combination of having low hp/armor and being a massive aggro-magnet. No other class draws that much aggro. Those mobs always go straight for the ele’s and ignore every other class. I’ve seen it happen to other ele players far too often and experienced it on my own ele. Dodges don’t help much when 7 or more veterans and/or elites are after you. Even if i use the staff and stand as far away from the mobs as possible, they go straight for the elementalists and chase them until they are dead.

Are you running with 3000 armour, maybe, in an attempt to mitigate damage? A lot of foes seem to aggro on those with higher armour levels, so it’s counterintuitive to build for toughness when trying to survive aggro.

In zerg-based content like LA, though – as said above, that’s not a benchmark for viability in any way, and those foes will often 3-shot a high hp/armour warrior with protection on. It’s really not just you that’s getting downed, or getting hit by attacks – a great many of them are AoE and hit stupidly hard when upscaled.

ShadowNinja.1238:

I meant full tank cause I wanna troll people by sustaining forever lol.

You can’t do this against anyone who isn’t also running a bunker build – you really are best going for a hybrid or more damage-oriented build, because the best way to live forever is by making sure there’s nobody left alive to kill you.

Then get into the fray as a staff! You think that it’s possible to keep foes at 1200 range all the time? Due to the ’no trinity’ design of gw2, almost everyone fights at melee range the majority of the time, with long-range only really being used for snaring foes. Did you not read Dahkeus’ post above?

At any rate, it won’t be at all sensible to add a water field to daggers - as has been outlined above, it would be a pretty massive buff that would probably push them right back up to overpowered, and nobody should be campaigning to become that.

I seriously encourage you to stop thinking about how much better off you could be with a water field on your weaponset, and instead work on other ways to stay alive - learn your enemies’ tells, and know when to retreat to heal up rather than expect to get to facetank your foes without retreating.

Note: staff has water fields, but staff also has lousy single-target damage compared to other ele weapons, and a lot of ground-targeted AoE that any sensible foe will aim to avoid before it even goes off. Staff users also have to use their utilities and traits to finish combos, with only one blast and two projectile finishers on the weapon itself, meaning that if they wish to, say, blast water fields... they can’t also take the triple cantrips I hear so much about.

Each weaponset plays differently, and they ought to stay that way - chucking unique features from one onto the others will only serve to devalue them all and detract from the great variety of the profession.

Ash, I think you should just start playing staff if you’re so desperate for water fields

…so you’re running a completely different build, with the only similar utility being Wave? xD

I remember now (due to this post) where I first saw the Flame Axe suggested for Staff, though I never did get round to watching that video – giving it a quick look now, I see that I’ve ended up running exactly the same skillbar as KFC showcases.

So yeah, kinda wished I’d actually watched that video and played around with the axe much sooner, and many thanks to KFC for sharing this build with folks in the first place – sorry for not attributing you in OP, I couldn’t remember who had suggested flame axe and had no idea that my setup was so very similar to yours!

Re: my setup, I’ve switched to Valkyrie amulet and Grove runes – I still have the Protection uptime, and good healing power, but another few hundred power and that nice buff to crit damage (with 24% crit chance much of the time due to fury).

This skin is for achievements in the current PvE living story, so it makes sense that only folks who put the time into PvE should have access to it.

I agree that we really need some PvP-only skins, to show actual PvP achievement and prevent PvP players from looking terribly inferior once gear unification rolls out... but for this particular one (or actually any skin tied in to PvE story) I’m good with it only being available to people who participate in the PvE content it’s related to.

Lordrosicky.5813:

cheese.4739:

Ryld.1340:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

I’ll say that internally staff Ele has turned out to be strong, scary strong against condi meta.

How? How exactly? They flat out die to Corrupt Boon / Spite. Is there some magical spec that I don’t know about? Also, if they spec hard for anti-condition, they’re still only mediocore, still get shut down by engineer/necro, and lose a lot of survivability against power dps.

It’s like somehow the Dev’s don’t realize that people can’t spec 20/0/30/30/30 for Cleansing Fire, Diamond Skin, Cleansing Waters, and Evasive Arcana.

Diamond Skin + Evasive Arcana is enough, and I put my other 10 in water for a little more regeneration. Folks who go pure condi can’t touch me on their own, since I have high regen uptime, high/perma protection, and blast finishers in water fields.

As I’ve said before: I don’t like that DS has to exist, but as long as not running it makes me a walking stomp for anyone with condi… I’ma take it. If you can’t do 1.2k direct damage, you’ve min/maxed really hard and should expect hard counters to exist.

Not really min maxing when the whole amulet system is so restricting that you either do 0 damage as a necro or you do a ton. So you either go power or you dont. That is not min maxing AT ALL. It is built into the game. Sure diamond skin wouldnt be so bad if you could have stats on 12 pieces of gear. But you cant so you get more hard counters because the whole amulet system pigeons holes you

Necro really does need more choice, I do agree with this – the only class that I see getting proper versatility and choice between power and condi builds is (ta-da) warrior, and that’s because they get their natural high defence and hard-hitting attacks even without too much investment in Power.

I’m pretty sure that the biggest problem with all of this is that Condition Damage is a primary way to deal damage – it means that cleanse isn’t just a way to ease pressure, but a complete necessity to survive against a number of builds. We either need the crazy strength of condition burst to drop (with maybe Torment and Confusion staying strong, since they’re actual punishment condi – and with a major increase in the viability of power builds for some classes), or HP pools to be normalised (so that conditions don’t kill some classes 3x as fast as others, though this would chuck so many spanners in the balance works), or cleanse to be made much more easily available to a wider variety of builds (which would render condition builds near-useless, and reeks of power-creep).

Ryld.1340:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

I’ll say that internally staff Ele has turned out to be strong, scary strong against condi meta.

How? How exactly? They flat out die to Corrupt Boon / Spite. Is there some magical spec that I don’t know about? Also, if they spec hard for anti-condition, they’re still only mediocore, still get shut down by engineer/necro, and lose a lot of survivability against power dps.

It’s like somehow the Dev’s don’t realize that people can’t spec 20/0/30/30/30 for Cleansing Fire, Diamond Skin, Cleansing Waters, and Evasive Arcana.

Diamond Skin + Evasive Arcana is enough, and I put my other 10 in water for a little more regeneration. Folks who go pure condi can’t touch me on their own, since I have high regen uptime, high/perma protection, and blast finishers in water fields.

As I’ve said before: I don’t like that DS has to exist, but as long as not running it makes me a walking stomp for anyone with condi… I’ma take it. If you can’t do 1.2k direct damage, you’ve min/maxed really hard and should expect hard counters to exist.

In sPvP, you kinda have to be in a capture point to be useful - maybe zerker staff players who die when someone looks at them aren’t near their foes when using skills, but if you want to contest a point you’ve gotta be preeetty close to enemies.

Against MM Necroes, spirit Rangers and most Mesmers, Brilliance can heal for huge amounts while not in a water field.

The blast finisher is certainly much better utility on the staff (which only has one blast of its own anyway), and I don’t know if folks are running it with S/ or D/ sets - I expect most folks are sticking to ER, with the odd glyph heal.

Ah, I was definitely getting something wrong there, my apologies - the patch notes say its distance was increased by 200, and I’ve somehow been ignoring all evidence that it’s less than that.
Just trialled it, and it’s currently about 900 range, and something like 1100 with swiftness. Sorry for getting that so wrong!

As a staff user: mobility is actually pretty great.

Burning Retreat now goes 1200 distance on 20s cooldown, and I can easily maintain swiftness... but more importantly, I have 3 CC skills that I can just drop behind me without turning round (huzzah for ’look behind’ keybind):
- Frozen Ground: chills, unblockable, ignores Stability since it’s a soft CC
- Static Field: stun, unblockable, affects foes teleporting out of it (though ignored by Stability)
- Unsteady Ground: blocks passage, can trigger multiple times if whoever you’re running from is an eejit (affected by stability)

Combine these skills with the 15s Burning Retreat on the flame axe, a Lightning Flash teleport, or even an FGS, and it’s easy to escape from the vast majority of assailants.

Also, re: RTL, a suggestion that someone posted rather a while ago, should it have to keep the double-cooldown mechanic:
At the end of the channel, check if any foe is within 600 units (maybe closer than this). If there isn’t anyone within this range, double the cooldown.

Yep, things that tick once per second tick once per full second, not per rounded second. Boons and conditions will still last exactly as long as is calculated (such as the 3.9 example, Sol), but the Regeneration boon or non-confusion damaging conditions won’t tick beyond the full second.

This doesn’t mean condition duration is useless if it only gives you partial seconds, though - if you apply 3.9s of burning, then 1.2s of burning before the first stack runs out, you’ll get 5 ticks from the burning rather than just the 4 from rounding each number down.

Caliburn.1845:

Add me to the “like” Skyhammer side. Having to alter my weapons, utilities and traits for max effectiveness is good. The damage on the cannon could be nerfed a bit, or perhaps made dodgable.

Ignoring other issues with Skyhammer (mostly that instant kills aren’t regarded by many – if not most – people as a fun or interesting mechanic, no matter what the counterplay may be), the “you have to run a different build” point is terrible right now because we can’t load preset builds at all, or even change traits once in the map. Having to reset your traits and manually reselect them after every match, because of one controversial map, is not okay.

Regarding Engineer kits: they don’t have a minimum 9-second cooldown, so the most damage that chill can do to the kit mechanic is add 0.66 seconds to the time before they can swap to another kit, rather than add several seconds to the time before they can access their necessary skills.

Aha! Thought there had been an official dev response.

Actually the best condition from this trait is probably Immobilise, since positioning has so much effect - changing to damaging conditions might make this trait useful in PvE, but other traitlines are probably rather better for those focusing on damage.

You’ve never been able to get the 20-slot bags for just 500 glory, it stops at the r40 vendor for 18-slots... but this is still a delightfully cheap way to kit out new characters before they really need the bagspace.

Elitist.8701:

Meh. Meteor Shower+Tornado is awesome for nuking bunkers….

But if they’re paying any attention, they’ll leave the point during the shower, and only come back if you actually get close enough to contest – by which time you are probably already dead.

Okay, so I’m rather into PvP, and have played pretty much exclusively as a Staff Elementalist, with my builds changing over time. I’m not too hot on going full Zerker and nuking points then running far away, since I prefer to fight on-point and like being able to survive on my own. Right now, I’m using this, and both enjoying and succeeding with it – but I’m interested in feedback from other Staff users, particularly if you’ve found your own useful builds for PvP.

Primary things I’m not entirely certain about, and am particularly interested in getting advice on:
- Arcane Mastery trait
- Rune set – especially with that unimpressive #6
- Amulet – I’ve considered chucking a Zerker jewel in there, or moving to primary Valkyrie, but not yet gotten round to testing them

Aims of the build: work for Diamond Skin, and be functional in smaller group fights – obviously can’t stay alive in a node with 4-5 foes on it, but I’d like to be reliable in 2v2s or be able to last through a thief’s burst. It’s ended up low on cleanse (no instant cleanse, and only Windborne Speed can quickly clear immobilise) but I can get 100% protection uptime, high regeneration uptime, and 15+ might stacks to still dish out some damage.

The most powerful tool in the build is probably the lava axe – it gives a blast finisher for general utility, a second Burning Retreat for great mobility, and a leap finisher for a dazing strike – or to gain a fire/frost aura and some protection. Lightning Hammer has a similar set of skills, but its autoattack finisher isn’t reliable enough for blasting most fields, and I’ve settled on the axe.

Arcane Shield and stability-on-attune make stomping pretty reliable, and the blocks also help out on Silent Storm or (…) Spirit Watch/Skyhammer for gaining objectives. The main places where this build shines, though:

- Against full-condi Necromancers. They just can’t break through the skin, especially with Protection up (and often an extra 10% from Frost Auras). As long as Arcane Shield isn’t wasted, their Flesh Golem’s charge shouldn’t let them offload enough conditions to do serious damage before you can heal back up and kill the minion.
- Against decap Engineers. Regular stability and an immunity to immobilise makes it hard for this nuisance set of builds to decap against me, and pistol/shield ones will do zero damage with their conditions so I tend to win by whittling down their health before they can get the full cap. (they’re also the folks least likely to PM abuse at me for using Diamond Skin, since most of them run Automated Response ;p )
- Decapping against home point defenders, like Spirit Rangers. It’s easy to decap with a point-blank Gust then Static Field or Unsteady Ground, and if they pop stability there’s always pressure with Meteor Shower and other AoE, then a quick Tornado to push them out.
- Small group fights. There’s a lot of might to share, and quick access to bursts of healing if necessary. An ally to stay in-point while I quickly Burning Retreat to 1200 range really helps, too.

Skirmishes I try not to get stuck in:

- Most good thieves, especially the S/P lot with their rupts. They tend to appear out of nowhere, and hit hard enough that the Skin is broken after one hit. Activating the shield and running away is often my response to getting caught alone against a thief.
- Condition warriors. They deal enough direct damage that their conditions will reliably get through, and they have that powerful sustain from Healing Signet so that the damage I deal is regenerated while I concentrate on healing up or kiting.
- Fights against a mix of power and pure condi users. I can expect to get focused first, and the power users will easily do the 1180 damage needed for the condi one to unleash their burst.
- Large battles on any node, or fighting alone against 2+ foes – this is not a bunker build, and retreating is almost always the best plan if caught under heavy fire.

So yeah, brief overview of the build there, though I’m sure I’ll’ve missed a couple of points or used words that got kittened by the weird and wonderful filter we have.
Thoughts/comments/suggestions/questions? ^__^

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I meant Water 5 in D/D, this would have NO affect on staff usage what so ever.

It won’t affect how Staff is played, but it takes away one thing that Staff Ele has that no other profession/weaponset has: water fields that aren’t tied to a personal heal. You massively devalue this backline-support ability if you shove water fields on a close-combat weaponset.

I do see your point about Armor of Earth and Mist Form, butt hey do need buffs because for defensive utilities they have rather long cool downs and are rather poor compared to others.

We really don’t need to encourage people to use cantrips, though - reverting the mistform nerf might be nice, but mostly we need our other utilities brought up to scratch.

I was thinking more about different types of fields we could have that could make playing in different attunements and making them have a bit more synergy we have ONE type of Field in D/D...Fire we could do with a couple more to help make the attunements have a little bit more synergy, so that you can combo through various attunements with various affects. Not just Fire and might.

Again: this is Staff’s thing. It gets fields and AoE damage, but loses out on a lot of single-target offense or might stacking without utilities.
Scepter has two blasts, offhand Dagger has two blasts, main hand Dagger has a leap - Staff gets one single blast on the weapon and needs utilities to make good use of its fields. Giving more fields to the other Ele weapons, with their many finishers, would devalue staff greatly.

While we have them on Conjured weapons, the conjured weapons themselves are lacking and they remove all weapon skills so you cant combo various (potential) fields we have

Yes you can? A well-timed lava axe conjure can allow a blast finisher in a Geyser’s 2-second water field - all the conjures’ fields and finishers can be used well in combos, if done correctly.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Armor of Earth:
Reduced recharge from 90 seconds to 60 seconds.
Decrease direct/physical damage taken by 25% (stacks with Protection)

This turns it into a /must/ have for every elementalist, not just the very common skill that it is now. Traited 48s recharge, for almost 60% direct damage reduction and stability that lasts 8s? Endure Pain is a terrible skill, we don’t want to be the next warrior.

Mist Form:
Reduced recharge from 75 seconds to 60 seconds
Reduced the movement speed decrease to 33%
removes all conditions on player
removes all CC on the player

We need some cleanse that’s not on cantrips, not to make people rely on them even more. It’s already a stunbreak anyway.

Burning Speed:
This ability now evades attacks.
This skill is now a Leap Finisher

This is possibly okay, though we do already have leap finisher sources (conjured axe/hammer).

Cleansing Wave:
Water 5 and Evasive Arcana dodge in water Both Water Fields. Last 3-4seconds. Grant regen every second for 1 second

This would... be broken. Staff is a /support/ weapon, this is why it has water fields - adding those to the more combat-focused weapons would be broken. Hello, D/D bunker funtimes that got us nerfed to hell!

Ring of Earth:
Now also applies Poison, 5 seconds
Now is a Poison field that lasts 3 seconds

No, no, no! We’re balanced around /not/ having poison. I’d like to see us get better access to some of our control conditions, but we certainly don’t need a bunch of new ones (further entrenching us in the horrible condi meta).

Who really cares about water combat? so the trident change doesnt bother me, i stay out of water as much as i can anyway.

This is um. Yeah. You really don’t understand what you’re talking about here. Water Trident is a scepter skill. Please stop suggesting balance changes when you don’t even know your skills - and if you did actually mean the scepter skill by this... why stay out of water? You’re an ele, that’s where your sustain is, you kinda need your sustain.

Deified.7520:

Romek.4201:

i want an “autokick engineers around the map at 25% hp”

Why?

I don’t understand the anger with this sorry. I haven’t kept up on it and wondering why I see comments like this so much?

With Automated Response? It gives engineers immunity to incoming conditions when they’re under 25% health (existing condi continues to tick).

I quite like this idea, though I’d see base attunement cooldowns increasing again if it were to happen - since staying in one attunement wouldn’t necessarily be a punishment, it makes sense to require folks to invest in arcana if they wish to dance more often.

Asomal.6453:

Luck affecting PVP would be the stupiest idea ever. I really hope Anet don’t go that road

What you get from chests is already RNG; I don’t see how adding magic find would make things any worse. As long as they stay away from unlocks (apart from maybe as a very basic tutorial mechanism) and keep players on even footing for equipment/skills, this change shouldn’t be a problem for us.

Um, ele has probably the best access to burning out of all classes.

We’re not in a great place for playing condition builds since we can only really apply bleeds and burning, and it’s hard to cover those with other non-damaging conditions, but it’s pretty easy to maintain burning on a target if you spec for it.

And once again: burning cannot and will not stack in intensity, ever. For what you want to be implemented, we’d need to see the burning from this skill changed to some other effect that behaves exactly like burning apart from how it stacks - and then how would this new effect interact with burning? Would new burning stacks add to the duration of the double-strength one? Would they function as a condition alongside this double-strength effect, meaning the target suffered from triple burning? It’s all overcomplicated and confusing.

This is an interesting idea, but it’s not a good one. There are other, much better ways to give elementalists viable condition builds.