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The 1200 range is more to let me reach things than to let me fight from out of harm’s way. I don’t actually have move myself to any particular location in order to attack, so I can place myself wherever is most beneficial.
If people run out of geyser after 1 tick, so be it. It still healed for as much as cone of cold would have. and then if they don’t run out, it heals for a lot, and if the field is finished, even more. The only actual advantage cold cone has is the cooldown. It’s up every time you switch to water, while geyser might not be. Also, healing rain is a huge field, so its placement is pretty flexible. It does fine even if things are moving around. And other people can use it to heal themselves. The only bad part about it is that you can’t move while casting it. which can indeed be pretty bad sometimes.
Has scorpion wire been fixed? (I haven’t played in over a week)
That’s all I want to see atm. maybe improvements to pistol main hand
thief is fine
so what if dancing dagger is now useless? Other classes have loads of useless skills. The apparently super tiny live balance team has much more important things to be working on
Staff kinda sucks until you’re lv 40 and can get Blasting Staff (trait). Use dagger/dagger with a power build, or scepter/whatever and a condition build
Cone of cold (D2) has the weakest heal by far. One tic of geyser (S3) heals for about the same as the full channel on cone of cold. On the other hand, cleansing wave (D5) is awesome.
But water fields are also awesome. And uh.. evasive arcana isn’t limited to daggers. lol. Dodge roll in water, lay down water field, swap to earth, roll again for the blast finisher. Or from earth, use eruption, swap to water, lay down water field on top of it. and optionally dodge roll for the heal. Staff definitely has more healing potential than dagger.
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Oh. No, I never use P/D, so no, I never use shadow strike. Didn’t even know what the name referred to until several posts in. literally the only thief skill I didn’t know the name of.
I use the reverse one all the time, though. D/P. because pistol off hand is awesome. and pistol main hand sucks.
Half the time between the first and second hit.
BAM, flanking strike is now awesome.
elementalist pairs well with every class, because of all the stuff it can do
idk about you, but I do Tons of Damage™ with my ele
It can work. Elementalist has some pretty sweet defensive moves that can keep you from getting hit.
What the heck? Steal is amazingly awesome. After my first ~5-10 hours of playing thief, I realized how amazing steal is, and then for the next 20 or so hours, I literally could not get over it. It took me that long to calm down.
Simple, versatile, and satisfying, without being overpowered. It’s pretty much perfect.
Elementalist is amazing underwater (unless you’re running a condition damage build); it’s the other professions that suck. Thief’s perma evade is hilarious for defending points in PvP though.
Your DPS would be barely more than spamming fireball and doing nothing else (no lava font and no burn). And it would be less than a mono fire build doing it (since it’d have fire traits like might on fire spell cast)
Chill is cool, but you can get almost as much chill by just swapping to water whenever frozen ground is up, and using the frost bow. Water isn’t something you can really stay in and hope to be successful. The best a one-element elementalist can do it not really be truly single element, but have a main element plus momentary swaps to other elements.
.
Oh I just had an idea. The -20% cooldown on X element spells should be paired with a reduction in that element’s attunement cooldown as well. Many other classes’ similar traits give some kind of extra bonus, or even affect multiple weapon types at once.
Yggdrasil makes me think of a lot of other things, most notably giant trees (and it looks like Wikipedia says it is indeed a giant tree) and Norn don’t strike me as very treelike. It is Norse, but still, I don’t know… I guess it depends on what you’re going for. Well it is a guardian, so maybe.
anyway, my dude is named Varg Tevormir
How many ales have i had?
this
The other races say lame stuff when they get confused, like “what’s going on?” “what’s happening?”. boring. But then norn. “How many ales have I had?” Awesome. I love it.
After killing a few dozen sons of svanir, I realized that norn males have the best getting hurt/dying sounds of any race, so I made a norn (ele) for my next character. best character-creation decision I ever made (I have 9 characters)
ESDF = movement (S and F strafe, not turn)
1234 = attunements. M3 (middle mouse) is also the first slot attunement. since 1 is a bit out of the way, and it’s also nice for other classes
A M4 W M5 R = weapon skills. M4-7 are side mouse buttons. My mouse has two buttons on each side.
Z = heal skill
M6 M7 X = utility skills
B = elite skill
Q = dodge
Tab = weapon swap
V = turn around
C = look behind
T = nearest target
Caps = next target
That AMA is what I was referring to. I haven’t seen much of anything at all outside of that. Hence we’re lucky if we get that much once a month.
and idk if you misunderstood or not, but to clarify, what I would like above all else is communication between devs and players (I don’t care any about ele weapon swapping)
And as for posting things that deserve dev replies, I’ve tried that, and I would do more if it mattered, but it doesn’t, so I don’t. Anything I post is under the assumption that fellow players will see it, and that devs never will. All questions/comments directed at players. On the off chance that a dev does decide to address something, the rest of you have it covered anyway.
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Have any devs ever commented
BAHAHAHA good joke
Seriously though, no. You’ll be lucky to have a dev address a small set of questions across the entire community once every month. The way they handle feedback is pretty depressing. More than anything, that needs to change. I don’t care about anything else; this one problem outstrips every bug or balance issue or anything else by an incredible margin.
That’s how thief is. It’s different. Initiative comes with advantages. You can spam whatever you want until you run out of initiative. And disadvantages. When you’re out of initiative, you’re out. You can’t use any skills (except 1, obviously) until you regenerate some, and even then you can only use them as fast as your initiative recovers. I don’t see how this is a problem.
Elementalists have so many anti-burst skills that even my glass cannon level 21 elementalist never died to burst in WvW except in one extreme case of loading issues. There is 0 chance of bursting down an actual defensive build.
utility
reflect
those are weapon skills, and only one reflects anyway
side note: “Fire Shield” really needs to be renamed. It doesn’t shield you in any way.
It would be the weakest skill in the game, except that it’s instant cast. It doesn’t really do anything.
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I just kill them really fast
can you give a build overview?
What trait do you “need” from fire magic
for a signet/aura build?
the signet aura trait
my other 80 is a thief
is a fun class, surprisingly versatile
well there are different levels of functionality. Given the nature of the topic, I was considering difficutly of using the weapon at a more basic level. No fancy specific combos that really don’t matter in PvE.
lol 14k crits
I stand corrected. One question then- what’s the escape plan?
make sure air is up, and ride
I thought p/p thief didn’t use anything but unload
so skill 1 doesn’t matter
yes
all of the venom effects
Time for the first annual “GW2 Grand Prix” we’ll have every class line up at the north side of a map with any build and weapon set they want and race to the south side, the winner gets 49 copper and a soiled rag ( salvaging kit not included)
This is the best idea in this topic
Yes. But I think
it doesn’t make a bit of difference, guys.
this class has some pretty serious issues, but
Do you consider any of the elementalists weapons to be hard to use? No, of course you don’t. We’re obviously talking relative difficulty. Read the topic title.
900 range combo in which all the moves have 300 range?
only for magnetic grasp
Or you could try using staff air 5, water 4, and earth 4 to control their movement… plus the various other ways to inhibit your foes via utility skills if you so choose.
Relying on other people is for those who are too lazy to accomplish a goal themselves, perhaps that’s the only reason why staff has become so good for me.
uh yeah, that’s why it’s hard. hard =/= impossible
sure, you can do it in some pve situations
but not in all, and not in pvp
because it basically leaves you with no utility skills. no stunbreaks, for starters
and it wouldn’t be efficient anyway. If you want a lot of conjures, take three and a utility skill. There are always a few normal weapon skills worth using even if your focus is the conjures. Weave those in too.
I’d also take the boon on attunement trait, since when you’re weilding conjures there’s not much reason to not constantly swap and get those boons. (Soothing mist lasts for ~8 seconds after switching out of water.) With my current PvE build, I have lighting hammer on my bar most of the time, and use a staff. What I’ll do is lay down a combo field and then break out the hammer, use the leap and/or blast finisher in the field, and constantly swap attunements while I hit things, which helps a lot since I have, uh… Elemental Attunement. that’s what it’s called. and enough in both fire and air for the deal damage on attunement minor traits. (I don’t have anything in water since I intentionally made it a 0-defense build, but 15 in water would obviously also be great)
but then the immobilized elementalist swaps to water and is no longer immobilized
edit: ninjaed by long post
WELL, sir. 30 in water means that every cantrip removes conditions.
the amount of crit precision gives you depends on your level. The higher your level, the more precision it takes. At 80, you need 21 precision for 1% crit.
And I have not found any cases of damage not being directly proportional to power
The I guess my fireball’s tooltip must be broken, because 3 stacks of might don’t add 105 damage to it. They only add 36 (603->639 while in town).
As for the crit, you’re probably right. Must have been a roundoff error on my part. My apologies.
Do you, perhaps, have around 1760 power? because 3 stacks of might (at 80) would add 105 power, aka an increase of 6%, and increasing 603 by 6% results in 639.
unless your target is hitting the bleed cap, you should be cycling between fire and earth for eruption (the single most damaging move you have)
The power and the condition duration. Condition duration is kind of awesome.
12 seconds of burning off of Drake’s Breath is plenty for me.
If all it did was give you an extra tick of burning, indeed it wouldn’t be that awesome, but condition duration also affects chill, immobilize, cripple, etc.
The only other condition that it will significantly improve is bleeding, since the others have such a short duration that a decent investment into fire magic will not be worth it, given the mediocre major traits. Somebody who really wants conditions to last longer without kittening their build should invest in runes/sigils.
them being relatively short is all the more reason to make them longer. Turn that 3 sec immobilize into a more usable 3.6. gives me more time to do whatever. And add an extra second to my weakness duration. And so on. Elementalist applies so many varied conditions that condition duration is a great stat. And there’s no reason I can’t use that in addition to runes/sigils.
And again, there is only one major trait that has any possibility of being mediocre at all in this case, since the other one is core to your build
So. extra power? great! + extra condition duration? great! + trait I need? great! + trait that’s ok but not great = kittening my build? Ok. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree
Paper napkin math suggests that 40 Power is roughly 3% more damage, wheras 40 Precision is roughly 3% more critical.
ThiBash well that is very paper napkin math. 40 power is equal to 3% more damage (direct) if you have 1333 power, which is not common.
It’s simple x% boost in power equals x% boost in damage (direct) in all cases.Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true in this case. You’re assuming that 1 power equals +1 damage but that’s not true for all skills. The skill I used to compare it for were staff skills, and the actual % varied even between the various skills.
However, on average, all the skills gained about 3%, so that’s what I went with.
As for the critical hit, I just added 40 and then it went up by 3%.
the amount of crit precision gives you depends on your level. The higher your level, the more precision it takes. At 80, you need 21 precision for 1% crit.
And I have not found any cases of damage not being directly proportional to power
it’s easy in pve when you’re always in a group that keeps the enemies from moving, and never have aggro on you
basically, it’s easiest against stationary targets. hardest against moving ones
movement speed buffs do not stack at all with any other movement speed buffs
Side question: what’s required to hit perma fury? 30 Arcana, +20% boons on runes, 20% air CD reduction?
20 arcana, 10 air
done
I mistyped. Scepter/DAGGER has the worst defense. Scepter/focus’ defense is very good; it’s the damage side of the weapon set that’s problematic.
oh ok. yeah. it does have less damage. NPCs don’t dodge dragon’s tooth though, so it’s ok
Scepter/focus has the worst defense
eh?
It has the worst mobility (no mobility skills at all! unless you count vigor to dodge more), but it has the best damage mitigation. armor buff, AoE blind, another blind, invulnerability, projectile reflect, and large AoE projectile protection.
you can facetank anything not immune to blind
Don’t waste initiative using pistol whip when your targets are blinded by the smoke. It doesn’t do damage any faster than your skill 1 chain
but yeah, caltrops OP PvE. use those. You now win every fight
scepter
and staff is hardest