Guild Wars 2

After what you wrote, your biggest skill improvement will come from playing OTHER classes in pvp and become good at all of them. Then you can go back to your elementalist and use what you’ve learned to adjust your playstyle.

I kind of agree that basically the only thing that makes ele great in pvp is the d/d celestial meta build. S/f fresh air with berserker gear/amulet is “ok”, you can burst people down and can do a lot with it if you play it at its high skill cap but still, it can be very frustrating to die to thieves who 2 shot you. Staff is clunky and just doesn’t feel right unless you play fullzerker and bomb people in node fights into oblivion or run in a zerg in wvw with more balanced gear.

So it’s a bit of a weird situation: The current state of ele is indeed great since it is top tier in all gamemodes. But this could change quickly in spvp and wvw roaming if the d/d meta build gets nerfed.

This is of course true but that door swings in two directions. How often will you notice that you take 15% less damage? When was the last time you had so little hp left that you know for sure that it was your mixed toughness gear that saved you? If you or your group do some major mistakes in a fight, three or four items with toughness and/or vit mixed in won’t save you either.

Do we really have to discuss things over and over again in one single thread ? Why don’t you just use your scrollwheel.

There are things you should corner stack. The Slaver is not one of them.

No one ever said you should cornerstack him. This is a general statement. But for certain groups it’s better to do it this way. And certain does not mean 1 in 1000.

Thaddeus.4891:

cursE.1794:

If you find something that disproves you, declare it as pointless and cheesy and gtfo. Well played, son.

And what exactly did you disprove?

That it’s wrong to state that cornerstacking should NEVER be done (..at the first boss in cof p1) by bringing up the frequent case of doing a run in a pug group?

If you find something that disproves you, declare it as pointless and cheesy and gtfo. Well played, son.

LOL, I was talking about the aggro system and just because I used the word “pulled” in a random sentence which Iris picked up on means that it was ME who brought up this discussion? Are you on crack mates?

YOU brought up the corner thing and we called you on it because you were wrong.

LOL. I’d like to see a quote there. That might make you scroll up to read what actually happened. I repeat for you: “I never said that you should always cornerstack”.

It’s funny how ppl always forget about the overall topic when discussing such things. So basically, everyone out there in gw2 knows about the “camera-facing-down-the-ground” and “swap-weapon-during-the-channeling” tricks, runs full zerker, does 30k lightning hammer attack chains, runs scholar runes etc etc right? Then every boss is dead within under 10 seconds. So we have no problems staying alive. Wait, why are we discussing survivability then?

….

Is it possible that not everyone runs in organized groups?

Staying alive is a problem in pug groups . And if you don’t run in organized groups, groups will tend to start spreading and bosses will walk out of fields if you don’t stack them in a corner (oh I forgot, they will be dead in 3 seconds anyway, right?). I was never saying that you should ALWAYS cornerstack. All I’m saying is that is has its advantages and it’s simply wrong to state that one should never do it (.. at the first coe boss) like you did.

No one said that burning speed deals more dmg against a wall. Icebow is only a dps plus against targets with large hitboxes or groups. It’s not worth using against a single, normal sized target like the first cof boss. And did it ever occur to you that burning speed and whirlwind might move you away from the group?

Iris Ng.9845:

First CoF boss, he doesn’t need to be pulled and shouldn’t be pulled ever after since FGS is nerfed (hello, wake up call!!) Let your group know that you will DEEP FREEZE the boss and rain ice bow of death to him. If you cannot dodge his Fire Grab (which animation is rather obvious to me), get on your second most OP skill <Lightning Storm>, and your truly OP skill: <Meteor Shower>. Or just go D/F as popularity demand.

CoE 2: go D/F. If the other golem lazer you? That’s cute, Gale him. Swirling Wind in between of the golem and use your second most OP skill.

1) I didn’t say that this kills me, I made a point of how the aggro system works and how we consequently have to make up for it while the defense of other classes (who have more sustain by design) consists mainly of not being attacked in the first place.

2) Let me enlighten you about the advantages of corner stacking AFTER the fgs nerf:

- Burning speed is much easier to use against a wall

- As is whirlwind attack which also deals more damage

- Any aoe effects like trait passives or mightstacks will apply to the group because it is made sure that everyone stacks at the same position

- Bosses sometimes will get pushed away by the group (even without using cc) which can mean a dps loss if the boss retreats out of warriors 100 blades attack. If there is a wall behind the boss, this is less likely going to happen

- dodging into a wall means you don’t have to turn around and thus you can keep up with your dmg

IMHO, the aggro system is actually kinda broken. Aimed attacks of enemys like the first boss in cof1 will always hit the target with the least hp/armor. He gets pulled, nothing has happened dmg wise and my full zerker ele gets his 5k fire grab. Just by standing there. Every. kittenin. Time. So arenanet is all like “ok we have no healers in this game so let’s make up for it by letting bosses attack the class with the least sustain”.

Another example is CoE2, where a lot of small robots and from time to time, two bigger robots spawn. I work 1 robot and the rest of the group does damage to the second one which I haven’t even TOUCHED. What does the second one do? He starts focusing me down with his laser attack.

AAAAAAAAHHH no. Don’t do that.

It is far better to use defensive traits until you learn how to survive better or until you find better teammates, and keep using zerker gear in the meantime!

qft

If you feel like having problems with certain encounters, you could use glyph of storms and cast it while in earth attunement. It provides a 10 second blinding aoe.

Save staff #5 and throw it into their shadow refugee.

Use dagger/dagger, first grab the trait zephyrs boon in air, then go deep into water and arcana. Here are the traits/utilities I would use:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhMM6cW4wlBf0APAC5fx2JKQ5qJfC

For equipment, take a good mix between power, precision, vitality, toughness.

In combat, always rotate through ALL of your attumenents. Start in air, activate #3 to get fury, then fire #3 #4 #5 and arcane wave into fire field, earth #4 into fire field, earth #2, water #3 in fire field (be quick to get it in before fire field expires), back to air and auto attack. If fire is ready again, repeat. You can combine fire #3 with lightning flash or engage with air #4 #5 -> fire.

When travelling long distances, conjure elite and use #3 #4 for mobility.

Elemantalist op? I doubt it

As Zelyhn said, get used to deselecting your target before casting AB.

As the zergs get bigger, d/d gets worse. If you run with up to 15 ppl (and of course the enemy zergs you fight have a comparable number), d/d might work. If you run in a bigger zerg, I would go staff and stand in the backline because as you said, you’re too squishy and take too much dmg to stand in the frontline.

D/D with water/arcana traits + zephyrs boon is the most efficient and fun setup to level if you do it by running around in the open world. It has good mobility, can handle a lot of mobs with aoe and rarely ever dies.

So as a new Ele with little experience what should I pay attention to or try to focus on learning the most?

A general answer for a general question: Focus on learning the class mechanics.

Elementalists are very squishy. Necro can go fullzerk and still have a lot of sustain for open world content. Have you ever done the cursed shore event farming rotation? There have been tons of occasions where I was downed as an ele where as necro I could simply go into ds and let the undead eat up my second health bar.

When it comes to zerging in wvw, I’ve played both necro and ele, again ele is very squishy and the on-point damage a power necro does to the enemy zerk is higher. Landing a perfect meteor shower is much harder than putting down 2 wells and go into death shroud for life transfer. When our commanders on riverside leap into an enemy zerk and want a burst at their position, they will say “necro spike here”. Also I feel it’s a lot easier to hit guards and stuff as a necro to get loot.

My point was that there are certain things that necro can do even better than ele. It’s a bit of a niche class but in some specific areas, necro is simply a great choice. And elementalist being a class that is good at nearly everything doesn’t disprove my statement that not every class can be good at everything.

This class is not as good in dungeons as other classes. So what? Not every class can be good at everything. I’d rather play two classes that are GREAT in specific areas than one class that is “ok” everywhere.

Elementalists are great in dungeons/fractals.
Necros are great in open world content and wvw.
Why not switch between them?

When you come to the necromancer forum, you might get the idea that dungeon speed running is EVERYTHING in this game. Let’s take the warrior as an example: They are good for dungeons but when a warrior engages my power necro in wvw, he gets his kittening kitten kicked. When I do cursed shore event farming and I can hit and tag almost every undead enemy, ending up with 30 heavy bags after an event with my tons of aoe dmg, I got certainly more out of it than a ranger or a warrior. Having a necro is not useless in this game, not at all!

I agree with using blinding ashes instead of going into water/arcana because those defensive traits won’t really do it, you could start right away with the “lucky passive” and some more power.

These s/f fresh air burst builds are nice to watch and every ele should have played it at least once, but in the end it’s just a lot of button mashing and looking at your skillbar which of your cooldowns are available. There are simply too much uncertainties within fights to stick with such builds for a longer time imho. If an opponent does those two clutch dodges and you miss your burst, you’re screwed. Otherwise your opponent dies within 2 seconds. Of course you can now take the 50% of the fights where you got away with it and make an awesome ZOMG OLOLOL video out of it, but in reality you will die a lot with this. Because humans make mistakes. And lucky dodges will always happen. A more sustained build like d/d allows for making mistakes (for both sides) and will result in less “variation”, meaning that luck won’t play such a big role.

- dump spectral grasp. Works “meh” to “ok” in the wide and open spaces of wvw, doesn’t work in spvp because of the map layout. Way too bugged, hasn’t been fixed, will never get fixed

- take spectral walk instead. This is a spectral power build, so spectral walk is a good choice

- consider taking 2 points away from spite and put them in curses to get spectral attunement; this will push the duration of protection and life force generation of your spectral armor to 9 seconds, last gasp in soul reaping will also benefit from it

- sigil of air and sigil of flame for your dagger weapon set, take something else than sigil of geomancy for your staff

- rune of the ogre: ok, you could also go for rune of the pack, the +swiftness duration and banshee’s wail will put the swiftness duration of locust swarm to 29 seconds on a 24 second cooldown for the skill itself, so you get permanent swiftness

- well of darkness: debatable, in my experience the usefulness of wells is very limited since anyone will instantly dodge out of them, chill doesn’t help there

Bhawb.7408:

Guys… we already know what the very basics of the GS is going to be, there is no need for speculation when we can see the auto attack in game already.

What will those mechanics be like? Where can this information be found? I’ve seen the video with the auto attack but it didn’t really enlighten me about the other mechanics of this weapon.

I think greatsword doesn’t really fit the class (as well as I think all greatsword – mage combos are a little bit weird) but my guess would be that it’s going to be a weapon set designed for power necro to get more viable as a dungeon class. Necro players always called for some features for their class, like cleave, being more viable in dungeons and the mobility issue was always present. So anet trys to address these problems. I don’t think it’s going to be a ranged weapon.

Spectral wall can be quite good in a fight since it makes you untouchable for melee characters for 5 (7,5) seconds. Bait out stability, corrupt it, place spectral wall and sit in it. Don’t use it offensive, use it in a defensive way on top of yourself.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/

You may not market, promote, advertise, or solicit within the Guild Wars 2 Game or on the official Guild Wars 2 websites.

That’s MY argument.

Necro is good at:

- cursed shore event farming (power necro; good damage, usually hits everything to get loot, has way better sustain than ele, even if full zerk) or more general: open world content

- wvw (roaming and zerg)

The class has its place in the game. I usually switch between my elementalist (dungeons, spvp) and my nec (wvw, open world). Can’t complain. You cannot expect every class to be good at everything, because “good” is always relative to other classes.

Apparently we’re using the necromancer forum for self-promotion now.

Necro dps is actually higher than most ppl know/want to admit. The problem is that necros dont bring much to the group except the potential of high vuln. stacking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnV6mTF53cA

This thread is about SPECTRAL power necro. This usually means you go into curses to get spectral attunement because this is where the power of that build comes from: 9 seconds of life force regeneration from spectral armor on a 40 second cooldown with spectral mastery which is also a must have on SPECTRAL builds. And that even twice with last gasp.

WH supports a condition damage build better than power but is still good, regardless.

This is simply wrong. Recall that power builds rely on rather high crit chance and make use of sigil of fire/air.

I prefer dagger over axe becaue of the auto attack since it received the buff. Life siphon is underrated and a good skill especially against mesmers and thieves if you time it in a way that you start casting it right before they go into stealth. And dark pact + locust swarm + auto attack is a really good burst/life force generation combo. So dagger has 3 good skills while axe “only” has ghastly claws.

I have a Sylvari necromancer.

I went with with a design goal of “rotting log.” It looks pretty good even in starter armor.

Same here, I also love how nightmare armor fits both male and female sylvari.

6 months

And still no FGS #4 fix! Great job Anet!!!

so true… so true

Overshooting by 6 percent and garunteeing a crit is better than only being at 70 even with stability. Fitg is just another boon to be stolen or the opponent waits for it to go away. And then ccs the living kitten out of you.

Uhm.. there are only 3 skills in the game that can steal boons, one of them being mesmers arcane thievery that has a 45 second cooldown and will most likely be used to cure his own conditions, the other one mimic which is one of the least used utilities. So this is only thief you’re talking about here. And not every thief on the planet runs s/d. And thieves won’t cc the living kitten out of me with 2 seconds of stability.

necros are horrible in everything
[…]
Can a zerker DS necro shoot you down? yes. So leave. They can’t catch you, so you just wait for their DS to run out, and then you come back. Same thing for lich…

As a power nec, I’ve fought warriors in 1on1s who just kept engaging me, getting the kitten beaten out of them and running away without me being able to finish them. Over and over again. At some point, I realized that I’m ok with that. I’d rather play a slow class that can smash anything in a straight fight than a mobile class that can’t stay in face – to – face range without either dying or running away.

IMO, spectral power necro is one of the strongest builds in the entire game at the moment.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBIhZakjmWbrtx4G2bTgMUQ9kRHAHQBQdUEE/AA-TljDwAyUVZqSDDnAgQ6AAYCCxjAgqyAXqV8UJ2ItAf0Esb/hEKBjcEAIDwyWA-w

I just figured out that the build I posted works better with spectral grasp instead of well of suffering. Oh, and nice montage btw.

I’m running the spectral powermancer as well, but I think you waste a lot of synergies in the build that is called “spectral build” in your post. A few suggestions:

The spectral power build relies on building an insane amount of life force within very short time over and over again. This is so effective because life blast does devastating damage while in death shroud and on the other hand, you want all the damage you get to be absorbed by DS. Thus,

1) use spectral walk AND spectral armor. Spectral armor will have a 40 seconds cooldown while it grants you 9 seconds of protection and 9 seconds of life force generation. A very strong and highly underrated utility.

2) go for close to 50% crit on your equip. Look at 3) to see why

3) replace “vital persistance” with “near to death” and replace “death perception” with “foot in the grave”. Furious demise in curses will make sure you get 5 seconds of fury and thus 70% crit chance everytime you enter death shroud. This allows you to pick up 3 seconds of stability everytime you enter death shroud. The synergies here are insane:

- 6 seconds cooldown on death shroud with insane life force regeneration
- 5 seconds fury and 3 seconds stability everytime you enter death shroud

You will often have around 30% stability uptime during fights! So even by using this trait only in a passive way, it will neglect a lot of incoming cc and thus you get rid of necros biggest weakness, which I call the “punching ball” effect. In your build, you go for 36% crit, which means you overshoot by 6% when you’re in DS which could be used as toughness.

This is what I’m running and it crushes everything once you get used to it due to its insane sustain.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBIhZakjmWartx4G2bTgMUQ9kRHAHQBQdUEE/AA-TljDwAyUVZqSDDnAgQ6AAYCCxjAgqyAXqV8UJ2ItAf0Esb/hEKBjcEAIDwyWA-w

You might think that the toughness takes away too much of your damage, but 48% crit chance will make sure your sigil of fire+air can be kept on cooldown AND again more crits out of death shroud (even by applying damage through locust swarm) means more life force regeneration through reaper’s precision.

D/D did not need a nerf. Once again devs nerf eles while leaving the true op classes alone.

Engi wasn’t nerfed hard enough. Only took a hit from the nerf to might and everything else was left unchanged.

/sadface.

These changes should be pvp ONLY. Totally unnecessary nerfs for wvw where condi bunkers are already dominant. These nerfs just further widen the gap between power builds and OP condi bunkers that can already burst as hard as zerker specs without any of the risk and without the need of might.

QFT

Seeing the ridicoulus balance work done in this game, I will now feel even less shame (or no shame at all) playing my broken perplexity/condition signet ele which is both, easier to play and 2x stronger than d/d cele ele in wvw. If arenanet WANTS me to play cheesy, that’s what I’ll do. They make the game, they make the rules.

Oh, and I just wanted to point out that a 17% reduction of casting time of lightning whip means 20,75% of damage increase since the attack rate has increased by this value. So overall we get +10% dmg for d/f builds which is nice for pve.

You’re not the first one who mentions this problem, I have a guild mate who also said once that he doesn’t take his ele to CoE anymore because of the aggro problem. IMO, the aggro system in this game is completely broken since bosses will almost always target their aimed attacks (cof p1: I always get to eat the firegrab of the first boss as fullzerk ele) towards the class with the least sustain (hp, armor). So an easymode warrior with 18k+ hp and heavy armor gets even more benefits due to the fact that bosses won’t attack him directly anyway. Good stuff, arenanet.

For CoE, you might run dagger/focus and arcane shield. In addition, you could consider switching to water 10 seconds before combat to conjure an ice elemental with your elite. The elemental has a 6k group heal. In combat, don’t use your earth abilities to stack might, instead use arcane wave + frost explosion and ice comet. Then you have arcane shield + your heal + elemental heal + obsidian flesh + dodges to keep yourself alive.

There are no healer builds in this game that don’t involve being a guard and even then it’s more about giving stability and protection. If you want to be a healer you have to play another mmo, as sad as this statement might be. The earlier you face this fact, the easier it’ll be for you.

S/F usually gets crushed by warriors if they are not playing like they’re completely braindead. You cannot burst him down while for him it takes about 3-4 hits to kill you. Obsidian flesh and ignore pain/shield stance neglect each other. Same for thiefs. He sees you popping your defensive utilities and immediately goes into stealth/starts spamming dodge frames and attacks when you’re “naked” (again, if the player is not a complete kitten). Although one of the most difficult and challenging builds in the game, s/f glass cannon is usually not suited to do more than bursting down noobs or deal devastating damage to instagib an opponent in a teamfight.

If you don’t like d/d, I would suggest you try a d/f signet/condition build with perplexity runes. It’s a completely broken way of playing an ele yet crushes almost everything you’ll engage in a 1v1 situation by the price of throwing away your mobility.

Viable yes, optimal – that’s what you have to decide for yourself, I find d/d to be still stronger but some ppl might not agree with that.

If you go d/f, build around fresh air and use a slightly more glassy build.

I’ve seen this coming a long time ago. The sanctions against russia have made Putin stop the gas deliveries and now our incinerators are out of fuel. Shame on you, western politicians!

Same for sclerite karka shell. Animations not working after patch.

Especially at the beginning, you want to focus on how to get gold/gear within short time. Playing “efficiently” is not the way to enjoy the game in long terms, however at the beginning it helps you got get the gear/sigils/runes you want.

There are some things you can do on a regular basis to get a good amount of gold:

Dungeons you can do in pug groups, for example:

- ascalon path 1/2/3

- citadel of flame path 1/2

- twilight arbor forward/up

Of course you can do the world bosses, try to get a http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Salvage_Kit for a higher chance of ectoplasm globs when you salvage the yellow stuff.

A very efficient way to make gold is to participate in the three big events in cursed shore: temple of melandru, temple of grenth, gates of arah (including pre-events!).

So I would suggest you do your dungeons, dailys, cursed shore events and world bosses until you have decent gear and then you can decide what to do from that on. There is a lot of things, like going for a legendary, crafting ascended armor, do the living world story, world vs. world, tequatl/jungle worm etc…

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhMM6cW4wyBf0APAC5fx2JKQ5qJfC-TVSHABNqqyIqVwx+DkpDwJlgeoFogHAQTK/A4EAQIgYbBA-w

This is what I’ve put together a while ago, it’s a very balanced setup with a slight shift towards sustain. No celestial armor needed.

Well even without weapon swap you have twice as much skills compared to other classes so there’s no need to introduce this especially in terms of class balance. So no weapon swap for ele, I’ve also not heard about this being part of a future patch.

In general, ele is a very good choice at the moment since it’s in a good spot in every gamemode.