Guild Wars 2

Speaking about Fiery Greatsword. You can use skill #4 untargetted with the Lightning Flash for pretty nice damage.

Demonstration: http://youtu.be/hoAWsEZbXG4?t=15s

Untargeted Fiery Rush is pretty crazy ( http://youtu.be/wPZaIWJfn6w ).

AFAIK teleportation skills are behaving uniformly across professions. You cannot teleport to a place if there is no way to walk there from your location and the walk distance cannot be very long too. For example: there were some places for example in EB jumping puzzle (WvW) where you were able to skip parts of the puzzle by porting, but it worked also with Ele’s Lightning Flash.

Yes, Lightning Flash is useful in WvW/PvP. This game is not about PvE only and not every skill has to be super-useful there.

Lightning Flash can be used as a gap closer or gap maker. You can use for example with Burning Speed or conjured Fiery Greatsword to maximize damage on a target. You can use during channels to get to safety out of line of sight and be able to finish channeling in safety (full duration Meter Shower during sieges, Churning Earth channel). On top of that it is a stun breaker and with cantrip builds it gets multitude of other benefits.

Thanks for the nicely done guide! Found it very helpful.

I personally prefer using Air VI trait instead of Air I. Air I with only Frost Aura available that is just 12.5% fury uptime.

Also getting Sigil of Battle is a solid DPS boost. Using Battle + Bloodlust and then switching to Battle + Force once you have 25 stacks of bloodlust is great.

Casting Dragon’s Tooth before the Ring of Fire will allow you to do more fire combos.

I’m not that good with gear optimization, but I have a feeling that switching soldier trinkets to zerker ones and swapping some armor pieces to soldier should net you some “free” stats as crit damage % on armor is not such a bargain as on trinkets.

I noticed somebody on youtube mentioned S/D WvW burst video. There is a thread about that video/build HERE . You actually don’t need to land your Dragon Tooth with that build to be effective.

EDIT: I noticed some days ago that scepter’s air autoattacks like to hit structures way away from the main target (definitely not in line). It is also easy to see in that video. Doesn’t look intended to me, but I guess it is a little bonus for us.

EDIT 2: On last boss in CoF P2 try to switch utilities to Frost Bow #4 and Glyph of Storms and combine them with the Meteor Shower and Lava Font. You will make other party members jelly :P.

eldain stenlund.4306:

Anyone have ideas how to make a Totaly Maximum healing set ??

Try this build: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1aun6t/ive_written_up_three_diverse_elementalist_staff/c90waod

This gallery is well done:

http://dulfy.net/2012/11/13/gw2-staff-skin-gallery/

blutstein.2468:

would like to see a video with the build in action!

There is a link to a short video clip few posts above.

Lert.6287:

“Thanks”, but it’s not my first day on ele >.<

Sorry if that offended you, but I had no idea how much experience do you have and I only saw that you didn’t know about that Meteor Shower issue with early cancellation.

eldain stenlund.4306:

Lert. you dont have to channel a Full duration on Meteor shower.

As soon as you see the first meteor hit..
you can dodge away. it will still continue its full aoe duration.

If you cancel your Meteor Shower earlier you will get reduced number of meteors. You can also test it yourself or look it up on gw2 wiki, forums or reddit.

Lert.6287:

For me, fire #4 has tad too long cooldown and fire #5 cast time (without stability, most likely someone will disrupt you or take 50% of your hp down). It really could be 1sec lower to make staff more viable in other situations.

Switching to water (regen + soothing mist) or earth (protection) right after starting the channel can help (water 10 and arcane 10 required). Also when running with a group (or zerg) Lightning Flesh can be very helpful. You can run towards enemies, start channeling fire #5 and them immediately teleport behind other friendly players to a safer position. This also works during sieges pretty well to channel full Meteor Shower from safety.

Dub.1273:

No, i’m not using traits or even spend skillpoints.

Jokes aside: always using berserker equip with scholar runes, 30/30/0/10/0 focusing on damage (sometimes for bosses 30/20/0/0/20 for vigor). Im somehow dealing more damage with staff autoattacks than with lightning hammer.

Very funny!

The whole point of this build is to use damage multiplying traits and recommended setup is 25/20/0/25/0.

Those 25 points in Water: Piecing Shards (20% dmg), Vital Striking (10% dmg) and Bountiful Power (lets say 6% average) minor trait. That is +40% damage right there.

Of course to get that damage there must be lot of variables met and thefore it is hard to test it by yourself, but even then I am definitely not getting lower damage than my autoattack :/.

Dub.1273:

Haviz could probably give you better feedback than me, i’ve seen him smashing Hunters in Arah for 10k+ in Solo Runs. For some reason the loghtning hammer seems to not work normal since i autoattack for less than 3k on a full berserker build :/.

Are you using traits that are multiplying your damage? Because those can make a big difference.

Knowing when are your skills in other attunements ready is part of the challenge of playing elementalist and it is a design choice. We have a lot of options but to use them optimally we need to get enough experience to know when something is about to get ready.

When you will play your ele bit more you won’t need to see all your skills.

You are asking for something that won’t get implemented. Based on all your complaints from last few days about this profession I am very surprised you are playing it (and the whole game). I would suggest trying other games that may suit you better instead of trying to revamp this game at such scale. Also your posts are very whiny and I don’t think developers will take them as a constructive feedack.

Wilda.3251:

does anyone have the build for this one ? Or is it just me that cant find it

The build is on youtube in the description.

Wreck.2634:

Bad Link. Doesn’t work

It does work.

Ilthel.7695:

Copy paste the url if the link does not work.

This is on the first page:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Best-Mouse-and-Keybinds-for-Eles/first#post1755237

EraSer.5013:

Does anyone have a viable staff build for WvW?

I would like to suggest you having a look on the first post of this thread for a link to staff guide, using search functionality to find existing answers or even creating your own topic with that question. This is definitely not a good place to ask such question.

CallousEye.5018:

He said damage over 3 seconds, but the hammer’s tool tip says each attack is .5 seconds, is the tool tip wrong? It doesn’t feel wrong.

It takes 0.5s from activating the skill until you get the damage, but there is also some post-damage animation. The whole auto-attack chain takes bit less than 3s.

Thieves have a great single target damage, so those numbers won’t seem like much to you, but they can be a solid DPS boost for other professions.

Damage can be higher than that with a specific build. As a bonus you are also getting a blast finisher (and a blind) within the attack chain.

Here are the details about the hammer build and some analysis: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/81706-ouch-my-everything-the-80-potential-amplified-damage-build-with-sustain-support-and-control/ .

Here is a demostration of using Obsidian Flesh for projectile absorption done by Drq.

http://youtu.be/icp-HpO_0yQ?t=12m34s

Maybe Mist Form and Vapor Form (downed state) are different? I would swear that I was not able to get through the Line of Warding with Vapor Form when I got downed yesterday, but I haven’t tried to get through recently using Mist Form.

Login server is down for me.

Crystal Desert (US)

google.3709:

Actually Ele get the most love out all the classes, dev even admited ele’s are currently the strongest class :P

Eles might have one spec with one weapon set that is strong but mesmers and guardians are definitely loved the most. They have more viable builds, generally better traits all across the board and they are very useful in all apects of the game.

Buff staff and scepter a bit, make some trait lines more appealing and add out-of-combat weapon switch and then I’ll agree .

I hope Anet has some statistics available and they can see that there is too many 0/10/0/30/30 eles which means that other traits and weapons need buff and not that they need to nerf that specific build to make everything equally bad.

Ljiona.9142:

Does the -1 weapon swap work with elementalist attunements?

No, it does not work.

Ejiofor.4801:

So…Engineers…this is US RIGHT NOW…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykittenpl8yXzk

Thank you, ANet, for giving us some love.

That link is broken and contains “kitten”. Hope I’m not missing something there.

amiable.4823:

What’s important here is if it can hit siege placed back on walls. If it can grenade engineers just became completely indispensable in WvW.

Yeah, it all depends on the arc of grenades. I think it most cases it would collide with the wall before it reaches the siege weapons back due to the nature of the arc, but I will gladly test that in few hours.

On the other side defending with grenades will work for sure as there is nothing they can collide with (<evil grin>).

It looks this patch is dedicated to engineers, but I think they deserve that.

Some love for S/x and I hope they will continue to work on that weapon some more on that in the next patches.

Quickness was nerfed which is affecting elementist indirectly. Some professions will be less bursty which is making them bit less dangerous and will give eles more time to react. I’m pulling this out of my kitten, but it also made eles bit more comparable with some other professions as their burst got toned down so they are bit less ahead in that area.

If you are a very casual player then don’t try to go for ascanded items. Just go for exotic. The stat difference is not that big to really affect you that much. People writing such guides are usually hardcore gamers and they have a lot of time to get best items available.

Frequency.2489:

•Karka Shell (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ancient_Karka_Shell)

This was very easy to get during the Karka event. It was a 100% drop and that is the reason lot of players have it.

I would just go with an exotic accessory from TP/Orr.

Frequency.2489:

•Ascended Triforge (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triforge_Pendant_

Yes, this one is expensive. But you can get one for 30 laures which shouldn’t be much even for a very casual players. Each daily will get you 1 and monthly is woth 10. Finishing a dialy is a matter of less than 20 minutes most of the time which is pretty fast.

Frequency.2489:

•Ascended Solaria/Lunaria (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Solaria,_Circle_of_the_Sun)
•Ascended power,toughness, crit dmg (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rurik%27s_Royal_Signet_Ring)

You can run fractal 10 dailies to get those. They can drop if you are lucky or you can just buy them after doing 10 dailies.

If you don’t have time/patience for Fractals of the Mists, just buy exotic trinkets from Orr or from TP. Doing dailies for laurels will also give you lot of karma.

Frequency.2489:

•Ascended Back
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symon%27s_History_of_Ascalon

I would just get Cavalier’s Spineguard for 42K karma from Orr: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cavalier%27s_Spineguard .

I would recommend doing a daily every single day as it is really easy to do very quickly. If you have some more time do a FoTM daily. If you are short on time try to run at least CoF P1 to get some quick cash or do a few zone bosses for rares and a chance for exotic. Even with playing 30-60 minutes a day it is possible to get some ascended items and exotic items for rest of the slots.

I’m glad you’ve made this topic on official forum. I’ve been following you on twitch/youtube for a while and I learnt a lot.

Keep up the good work!

For anyone interested – Silven youtube channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/RoknnOut .

Good luck with your legendary and adobe premier grind.

Looking forward to seeing those ideas :P.

Sporadicus.1028:

Did anyone notice that EG’s #4 Acid Pool became a Blast Finisher? It might have been something I haven’t noticed from the last mini-patch.

Yes, it is mentioned in the yesterday’s patch notes:

Acid Bomb: This ability is now a blast finisher at the start of the ability.

Hammerguard.9834:

Super Speed: I’m pretty sure it doesn’t make you “Run at double speed.”

Yes, the tooltip is wrong. It will make you run in combat at the out of combat speed with the swiftness up.

Amadeus.5687:

Looks something like this:
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/engineer#10|9|1207|4603|4700|1433|4065|10|1422|0|0|20|2268|1881|0|0|0|0|0|10|1478|0|0|20|1883|2271|0|0|0|1|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Still not sure where the last 10 points is placed, but I will figure it out!

Nice reverse engineering!

It looks that his last 10 points are in the Invetions line and he took Protective Shield (I). If you watch the video around 1:00 you will see it proc-ing and then 20s later again, etc, etc.

It also seems that Johan is using either Superior Rune of the Centaur or he went 30 points into Tools to get also Speedy Kits (VI) together with Static Discharge (II) and Kit Refinement (IV). You can see it in the video @ 1:50 where he with swiftness up crits and gets extra swiftness, but then immediately afterwards switches to the Med Kit (you can also see/hear the explosion from Kit Refinenemnt) and gets some extra swiftness.

Crystal Desert opened it 5 minutes ago.

Thanks a lot Johan for replying here and looking forward to your build.

Good luck with your future duels!

Thanks for the video, Intigo.

I’m very happy to see good duels esp. when it includes also an engineer and commentary/hints.

I x-posted it on the engineer forum and included a link to this thread (link is HERE ).

Intigo from the the elementalist subforum posted a video footage with multiple duels between D/D ele and a P/S engineer.

The PoV is ele, but I think it can still be interesting to watch for fellow engineers.

Original post is HERE .

Thanks for the guide!

Nice video and trolling, keep them comming!

10,805 HP with no vitality on the gear (PvE Berserker).

If we are talking about PvP Berserker Amulet & Jewel, then it is 14,095 HP, because it contains Power/Prec/Crit/Vitality.

Rayya.2591:

If you make the P/D thief to fail his C& D he will not be able to stealth again the whole fight, and he will die in 2 seconds with his 20000 hp , 2600 p def and 3 utility’s + 1 heal +1 elite up to use.

Using that previously mentioned tactics you will be able to counter his CnD and as far as I remember this is what this topic is about.

He won’t be able to heal that much, his damage/control will suffer a lot, he will waste a lot of initiative and you will be able to actually see him.

Yes, he has other skills available and he won’t drop dead immediately, but by learning how to counter CnD your chance to not lose the duel will rise significantly.

Thiefs are using dagger offhand, because most of the players have no idea how to counter that and they are lazy to figure that out.

Thiefs are annoying, but not overpowered. They feel overpowered to players that have no idea how to fight against them.

Engineer has a lot of different types of combo fields available.

Ethereal – 33% with Toss Elixir U (Veil)
Fire – Bomb Kit #2, Flamethrower #4
Ice – Mortar #4
Light – Elixir Gun #5, 33% with Toss Elixir U, Toss Elixir R
Poison – Grenade Kit #5
Smoke – Bomb Kit #4, Flame Turrent overcharge, 33% with Toss Elixir U
Water – Healing Turret overcharge (Regenerating Mist)

Thanks for the guide!

My feedback so far:

• In the table of contents there is wrong number for Shield subchapter (“6.01.1.5 Shield”).

• 6.1.1.5 Shield – You didn’t mentioned the followup skill for Shield of Absorption that detonates the dome and heals.

• 6.1.2 Ranged contains unnecessary mention of BWE – it can be removed as it applies to the released game too.

Keep in mind that in order to get credit (at least in the beta weekend events) you need to actually do damage to your enemies on an attack or defense.

• 6.1.2.1 Staff contains:

I’ll do my best to get some skill videos up here once the game releases and we have access to it again so I can show how the skills actually work.

• 6.1.2.1 Staff – Empower is granting 12 stacks of might with 10s 8s duration currently.

• 6.2.2 Utility – “Hold the Line!” grants a 4s of protection and 6s of regeneration according in 600 range according to wiki. I cannot check it myself currently.

• 6.2.2 Utility – “Retreat!” grants a 20s duration Aegis and Swiftness.

• 6.2.2 Utility – “Stand Your Ground!” grants a 5s stability and retaliation in 600 range.

• 6.2.3 Signets – Signet of Judgement grants currently 3s retaliation instead of 10s.

• 6.2.5 Elites – Renewed Focus has a duration of 3s and you are able to move during the channeling now.

I think it would be great if you could mention if skills are combo fields and combo finishers. You mentioned that Judgement is a blast finisher, but there is no such mention for Shield of Wrath and other skills which makes them even better.

Having a chapter about the available combo fields and combo finishers and their effects would be great.

thisolderhead.5127:

There was a comment that there were two guys looking after balance… though it never stated if they had grunts assisting or their time allocations…

There is a post by JonathanSharp clarifying how balancing works ( source ).

wolfie.7296:

maybe this is a good reason to respond:

Guardians are more or less cake.

-form a thief in the thief forum . there is a disconnect between what guardians say about how good they are and thives are no trouble and thieves like this. a dev could clear it up

What are the devs supposed to say? That they’ve designed guardian to die to a thief?

Skill level matters and a lot of players active on official forums are already care more about their profession and are better than the “average” player. I doubt experienced and well-built guardians are going to be a cake for a thief. Also ekitten is important, so a lot of players are much better on the forums than in the game itself :P.

I have played my elementalist a lot, but my engineer is only level 63 currently, so my experience in playing an engineer is lacking.

Engineers have very active playstyle, because they (and their skills) were designed around the attunement switching. You are basically forced to play very active or your performance will be very underwhelming. This is making itchy players very happy, but on the other hand if you like less active playstyle you have problems, because you need to press keys like a madman to not be inferior to other professions. Engineer with 2-3 kits who is actively switching between them is pretty close to an elementalist.

Elementalist probably win in the number of keypresses per minute, but engineer profession is allowing player to choose slower playstyle if he likes it.

Weapons of an elementalist always include some control, healing and damage, but the main “theme” is different for each weapon. Staff is not that awesome when it comes to 1v1 in open area compared to D/D, but it shines during zerg vs zerg fights or sieges. So you need to be prepared that if you want to switch “roles”, you will be forced to switch weapons too and therefore you need to leave combat, open your hero panel, change weapons and maybe some key traits, etc. This can be pretty annoying.

Let’s say you are roaming in WvW- killing sentries, dolyaks, capping supply camps, etc. Then you see that your allies are attacking a tower and you need to switch to a staff if you want to help destryoing sieges and denying defenders the wall. If enemy zerg arrives wastly outnumbering your group and you have your staff instead of your D/D equipped, then you are not going to be happy.

Engies have less things “built-in” and they cannot provide things like aoe damage or healing unless they change their utility skills, but because of the kits and the design of their weapons they are not forced to switch weapons and by reserving one utility spot for a grenade kits you have solid ranged AoE damage at your disposal during the combat. So elementalists have a lot of flexibility for chosen “theme” (e.g. range), but they cannot be built for multiple themes like an engineer. But if you are planning to stay in the boundaries of the chosen theme, you will feel super flexibile on your elementalist.

Another difference is that elementalists have recharge time on their attunements which is making them bit less flexible that it may seem even tho their flexibility is still lot higher than a lot of other professions. The issue is that if you switch out of attunement X to attunement Y and a suddenly a situation arises for which you have some awesome skills in attunement X, you need to wait for the attunement to be available again to switch into it. This is making elementalists activate most of their skills of the attunement once they switch into it because they know they won’t be able to switch back whenever they want. It has bit of a “rotation” feeling to it. Yes, the cooldown is not that big at all, but it may be still something potential elementalist players haven’t thought about.

I wish I had more experience with an engineer, but I hope it was still helpful.

It doesn’t mean 30 fixed bugs, but 30 changes.

I hope most of them are bug fixes and maybe some buffs and not nerfs.

Shadow.3475:

No i have karma but dont want the stats in it on World vs World armour so i woundered if i cod go to some NPC and buy it in Human capital or so that have other stats.

Exotics from Orr temples or lower rarity armor from hearth karma vendors in high level zones.

For exotics you don’t really need to do the events for unlocking the temple yourself. You can just open the map from time to time, scroll to Orr zones and see if the temple waypoints are contested or not. If not, you can waypoint there and buy the gear.

You can buy cultural weapons for karma in the capital cities (info here), but not the armor.

• Art of the Spanner – A Comprehensive Engineer Guide
• Various Engineering Tips (whole reddit post w/ other tips here )

Thanks for the guide!

Looking forward to watching your stream & youtube vids, so hurry up and make them!

There is only power/toughness/vitality armor and nothing else in WvW. If you want different stats you have to use alternate method how to get it (karma, dungeons, crafts, trading post). See this guide.

Thanks for this useful thread.

If anyone has got any new interesting guides, please post them.