Guild Wars 2

Now that I got that off my chest, there is absolutely no weapon, from a PVE and WvW standpoint, that outclasses every other in EVERY situation. Just carry all your weapons on you, shell out some extra gold to have a staff, scepter, two daggers, and a focus, and just use the right tool for the right job.

I agree that this is our best approach at the moment. However, each weapon represents a different combat style, range and skill set.

We’re asking Ele’s to gather all weapon sets, master 60 skills, learn 60 cooldown timings, master 3 play styles, 3 types of range (and maneuverability best suited for each range), and develop a trait scheme that lends itself a little bit to all 3 play styles but commits to none. Ele must do this just to be on par with the other classes when discussing a variety of situations. A class that boasts versatility shouldn’t have to improvise pre-combat, irreversible weapon selections just to break free of it’s inability to react to changes during combat.

I love that we’re expected to master so many facets of combat but it’s a little disappointing when your result is not something to be admired. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but it seems a little clunky to have to swap in the desired weapon set before opening combat and then be locked-out from swapping again. Our attunements should be making up for this, but they aren’t able to because attunement swap cooldowns prevent us from adapting to reactive combat.

I vote for a greatsword, 1200 range single target burst DPS -or- weak single target DPS + CC options.

I would just like some long-range damage. If ANet has it’s heart set on staff-for-support then give us a different damage-oriented long-range weapon. A lot of people are complaining about the shortcomings of Staff, I agree with them although I feel I could manage it if I wasn’t locked-out of my attunements.

With that said, I think it’s a considerable mistake to deprive this class of an effective long-range damage dealer. The whole “traditional back-line roles” description of the Scholar types found on the wiki is part of the problem people are having with Elementalist. The profession is attracting players who prefer and expect to play long-range combat and giving them a nearly melee ranged D/D for the meta.

the following assumes that our strength is meant to be our long-range AoE, which is my opinion because no other class has the variety of AoE/combo fields at 1200 range that we do

With regards to Staff (and long-range in general), we are the Masters of AoE but are hindered by weak DPS outputs and high swap cooldowns. I expect weak AoE DPS because no developer is going to design a class that can burst down five targets on a point. I don’t expect swap cooldowns on a class that can only use 1 weapon set.

Every class has it’s strengths and it seems like the intention was to give Ele the strongest long-range AoE but I think it’s being delivered poorly. It feels like playing a weapon that has the potential for perfect synergies but is being weighed down by ball and chain (swap cooldowns). IMO, If you need a group to be effective at something you are supposed to be strong at, something is amiss.

I don’t see the problem? You just swap to D/D or staff out of combat when situation requires. And you mostly don’t have to respec for it, since most builds works pretty much with every weapon set. Just cause you cannot swap in combat as Ele, it doesn’t mean you have to stay with that particular weapon set/roll forever.

I agree with your reasoning, but the problem seems to be that there are so few situations where D/D is not equally good or better than Staff. Staff would be so much more viable if you could either:

A) Reliably down your target from a distance in a 1v1 scenario—consistently.
^which is OP imo

-or-

B) Have instant access to all of your tools across all 4 attunements (no swap cooldowns).

Someone explain to me why Elementalists are expected to perform with 9+ seconds of lock-out from at least 5 of their abilities at all times after opening combat. Lock-out becomes more than 5 abilities if you are quickly chaining a combo across attunements. Without a deep Arcana spec, this problem is amplified.

I would understand locking us out of other attunements if it were possible to run competitively with just one. I don’t think it’s possible.

Swap cooldowns are forcing us into creating combos that link fluidly across the 4 attunements. These combos are really good in the right situation but so much of combat is reactive that it becomes difficult to apply it to a small engagement. (D/D’s setup seems to fare well in these situations—could be part of the reason why players choose it over Staff and label Staff as “support only.”) IMO, gameplay would be more interesting if you could bounce back and forth between attunements, choosing the proper skill not proper attunement for the situation.

If we’re locked out of attunements, we can’t effectively micro-manage a 1v1 because by the time we regain access to the skill that we need, the opportunity for using it is over.

My perspective is that Ele’s strength is supposed to be it’s ability to employ 20 skills, allowing us to adapt to reactive combat. However, we can’t use all 20 abilities in a given situation, it seems that we are stuck with:

5 | 5 | 5 | 5

I’d appreciate if someone could tell me why this suggestion wouldn’t work, be it balancing or any other reason.

eldain stenlund.4306:

Anyways.
To answear Lert one last time.

My idea for the option i want.. works like a scale.
You know, weights in different ends of a stick.

Take away from one end. the other rise.
very simple. right ? still with me Lert ?

Its the same i ask for on the staff.

I want the option to choose myself.
And myself. I whould gladly SACRIFICE.. (look it up if you dont know the word).
I sacrifice my AoE/support. to get better ranged nuker capacity.
(remember the scale Lert ? one side up, one down).

You can also do the OPPOSITE of this. (look it up if you dont know the word).
you can sacrifice some range nuker capacity.. to be STRONGER AoE/support.
(still remember the scale Lert ? up/down).

AND, this is the beauty… watch this Lert.
If you choose to specc into both.
You will have the staff just as it is today. Mediocre, jack of all trade.
(scale = middle balance, no up, no down. medium).

I actually like where you are trying to go because I too would love to be able to get a kill at 1200 range rather than having it always come down to a melee 1v1. I just think you may need to re-think your approach. You’re putting forward a scale that looks like this:

DPS oriented | Staff as-is | AoE support

The problem you aren’t considering is the right side of the scale. AoE support. What about the fact that GW2 does not employ “The Holy Trinity”, wouldn’t that make it pointless to spec heavily into AoE support? A big part of support is healing, and GW2 doesn’t have dedicated healers.

Now you only have one side to your scale.

Besides, the only way you could get enough DPS to down a target before it reaches you is to have really high burst. If you have really high burst you can bet none of it will be AoE because they’re not going to give you an “ez-mode ranged nuker” that you can use to down 5 players without them even knowing you are there.

We’re left with asking Anet to take the best AoE weapon in the game and make it single target. They’ll probably say something like “No.”

eldain stenlund.4306:

Options ppl. options. thats what we want.

And yes, iam gathering zerker gear on my elemental.
It is after all the only way to get some range dmg.
have armor fixed. working on rings etc.

you have so short cd on fire skills you cant affford to swap to a 50 % lower element.
i have 4.5 sec cd on my lava font. (crap skill). but its so short i can atleast use it all over the place and hopefully get a tick here and there.

i only switch to get away.
anything else is too low dmg to even consider.

I’m sensing a conflict here. Just because an attunement does less DPS than fire, you’ve labeled it “50% less attunement”, which I’m assuming means “50% less effective.”

You’re saying you want more options but all you want to do is put out DPS. What scenario are you considering where having pure DPS serves better than: DPS, CC, heal, combo fields, area buffs?

If you think you’re going to get a weapon that allows you to stand on a ledge and burst down 5 players on a point in the same amount of time it takes a thief to burst down one player, you’re mistaken. Bad players could could be overpowered with such a weapon, and good players would break the game.

I agree with you that staff is far from perfect, but the mechanic for switching through attunements is hurting you far more than staff. You won’t go out of fire because you don’t want to lock yourself out of your most damaging attunement. Understandable. However, imagine how much easier it would be for you to land your own DPS if you could swap between fire and all of the other attunements free of cooldown. Not to mention all of the ways that you could support your team (CC/combo fields/area buffs) while swapping right back to fire/1v1 utility instantly.

I was able to put together a build that achieved high protection up-time and while retaining most of your condition damage.

20/0/20/0/30
Fire II, IX
Earth V, VIII
Arcana V, VII, XI

Skills/Utilities are the same

The key is you have to use at least a Fancy Veggie Pizza foodbuff (you can go up to rare but they are expensive) to keep your condition duration.

Even still, I’ve always looked at Arcana is the “attunement switching trait line”, meaning that if you plan on attunement dancing quickly than you need to spec deep into this line.

The problem is that under this build if you leave earth at any point in time you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. Unless you want to play a build that uses burst as its primary offense with condition damage as a supplement. If that were the case, then I could understand adding some Giver’s armor (I think it’s +toughness, +healing power and +boon duration if I’m not mistaken.)

The reason I don’t do this is because if you go far enough over to the boon duration/power based build then you are going to be better off using the 0/10/0/30/30 (or at least building off of that core.)

The problem we Elementalists have when we want a condition build is that we have far more cooldowns that benefit from a power/boon duration based build. In my experience, this leads to having to spec full-out condition or nothing.

I think you could swap out earth II for earth V if you are confident in your ability to land your bleeds.

Bleeds have a 1 1/2 second channel, but you get 3 shots per channel. It’s really easy to only land 1 of 3 bleeds or 2 of 3 bleeds (players dodge, run out range, go behind obstructions, etc.) This is a problem because Stone Shards is a pretty slow skill compared to what you are usually facing. If you only land 1 bleed per channel, then you are stacking 3 bleeds per 4 1/2 seconds rather than landing all of them for a 3 bleed stack in 1 1/2 seconds. Essentially, if you miss bleeds, your DoT is 4 times slower. I miss bleeds, so I need frequent burns to back them up.

As far as losing earth II, One of the trickiest things about running this spec in sPvP is line-of-sight. It’s really easy to miss your Signets by getting them obstructed, this is due to the cast time. It takes 3/4 second to channel each signet apart from Signet of Restoration (which is a 1 second channel). Sometimes you’ll discover that your opponent moves behind an obstruction before the channel finishes.

You can make earth V work, but it’s going to slow down your signets and demand an even more mistake-free performance on your part. I don’t use it because too many of my 1v1s are coming down to the very last second, I can’t add time to my signet cooldown, especially if I’m going to engage another player right after a battle.

Condition damage is all about lasting long enough to put DoT on your opponent, but I feel that -33% incoming damage doesn’t buy me enough time to justify the loss of burn-time from Signet of Fire. Also, I couldn’t seem to achieve “nearly constant protection”, protection stacks duration but even when I blow all 4 signets in a row (which you should never do) I still only get ~5-6 seconds vs the 20-30 second cooldown times on signets.

When I run this bleed build I feel that the increase in condition damage from going Carrion over Shaman’s is 100% necessary.

Full Carrion gear, including trinkets.
Runes: 2x Afflicted, 2x Centaur, 2x Krait
Sigils: 1x Corruption, 1x Agony (I like this better than 2x Corruption, but choice is yours)

30/0/30/10/0
Fire II, III, IX
Earth II, VIII, XII
Water II

Signet of Restoration

Utility:
Signet of Fire
Signet of Water (Signet of Air for PvE, passive speed is nice)
Signet of Earth

Glyph of Elementals

With gear and traits, you can stack 19 bleeds at ~110 per tick. You apply Signet of Fire as well for a ~7.1k burn that you can keep up permanently.

You need to use Focus for it’s defensive abilities in earth. You have to be very careful about when you use these abilities.

You can sleep through most mobs in PvE, but I even run this spec in sPvP. In sPvP you can tag every opponent in a group fight with bleeds to score a lot of points. You can 1v1 reasonably well and very easily against players who aren’t good at removing conditions. You can be the deciding force in your team’s group fights because of the amazing bleed pressure. I find that players generally don’t notice your DoT until you have a large stack and either it’s too late or they have to move to remove conditions and this distracts them from defending against your team.

Along with using your defensive skills wisely, always keep rock barrier up and never hurl it. It’s not necessary in PvE, but in sPvP you should be able to keep this up permanently. Another thing I find important is don’t forget to apply bleeds. In a 1v1 situation it’s easy to get tied up in watching for dodge timings/popping signets to apply burn/chill/immobilize.

You will have so much bleed duration that the more frequently you apply them, either the higher your stack will go or the more condition removals you opponent will blow. Never stop applying, I even bleed them out when they’re downed.

Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to turn into a wall of text but this build interests me and I never see anyone else running it. That’s because you never leave Earth attunement. This is something that nearly the entire Elementalist community considers bad. I don’t imagine one could bring down a D/D of equal skill with this spec but let me tell you, this build is so easy to play in PvE and quite fun in sPvP. Enjoy!

Lert.6287:

Could I get for once support from someone who agrees that staff elementalists aren’t the ones most in need, please?

I feel like I could hold my own in small engagements with staff as-is, provided I did not have cooldowns between attunements. This would allow me to freely switch between damage and CC as rapidly as needed.

When I drop AoE damage, get focused, and have to swap to CC, I don’t like the feeling of needing to blow every (or most) of my CC in that attunement in order to get the most out of it before the 9 second cooldown (not to mention the 15 second cooldown if you aren’t traited into Arcana).

Then you have the issue of swapping to CC, using it, and having to wait 4-5 seconds (again, more if not traited Arcana) before going back to damage. In this amount of time almost all of our CC skills will have expired. This is a big problem when considering opponent’s ability to “just dodge out of our AoE damage.”

So I agree with you in the sense that the staff itself is manageable provided I am free to access all of my CC/damage at any instant. Elementalist’s can’t truly be quick thinkers or strategists because our attunements can’t keep up with our thinking.

As an Elementalist, are major strength is that we have 20 skills, but it’s more like

5 | 5 | 5 | 5

because each attunement’s ability to mesh with the others is being restricted by cooldowns.

stale.9785:

I’d say not eliminate, but reduce them drastically, to maybe 4 seconds.

Change the Arcane line to Boon duration and non-channeled weapon skill recharge, with the skill recharge maxing out at 30% (so it’s nice if you can spare the points, and not too consequential if you can’t.) This would also give some help to the abysmally slow recharge rates on staff/focus.

My thinking is that staff user’s generally want about 20 in arcane anyway, for blasting staff – if that allowed for 20% reduction on your non-channeled skills, it’s a bonus all around.

Excellent ideas, I like it.

suggestion/seeking advice TL;DR at bottom

Even when you spec 0/10/0/30/30 you still have a 9 second cooldown on attunements. For a good Elementalist, this cooldown is not a problem. However, this is the main reason why we have to spend 30 trait points in Arcana if we want to have what resembles free access to all of our skills. A luxury which many players in the Elementalist community agree is a necessity for versatility and meeting our full potential.

The problem arises when a player wants to build outside of the 0/10/0/30/30.

For example,

Many players agree that if you play staff you have to accept either very low burst or very low hp. Imagine, as a staff player, if you had decent long range burst (pyromancer’s puissance, etc.) and could switch to good CC and back INSTANTLY. As a glass cannon, good CC is your only method of survival once focused.

It’s difficult to kite with a 15 second cooldown on your attack skills

The point is, many players are complaining about “bunker D/D or go home.” Some players are even seeking advice on a play style that allows them to sit in a single attunement. Maybe we don’t need buffs or nerfs, maybe we need a change in mechanics?

If I could spec 30/0/30/0/10 -or- 30/30/0/10/0 or any number of high-burst-low-health builds, I, and the majority of other Elementalists, could develop a playstyle of nuke-CC-nuke-and back again that would easily mitigate if not ELIMINATE the problem of our non-flexible trait lines.

Am I playing the class wrong? Is there a way to play outside of Arcana without losing all versatility?

Everyone knows about this already. There must be balance problems with this suggestion that I am missing because Anet would have done this or something similar by now. Insta-stacking boons with our insta-attunement swaps? Keep a 9 second internal cooldown on boons that you get from swapping?

TL;DR
By eliminating attunement cooldowns Elementalists (regardless of build or weaponset) are given free reign over all of their skills, allowing more creative gameplay combinations and the ability to build around any of the other 4 trait lines outside of Arcana