Guild Wars 2

First PvP ele to think around the corner for more then half a year. Kudos to you for that. Didn’t thought I would experience this before finally leaving the game. Bad thing to see you leave the game aswell tho.

Erm. What exactly is the fuss about? This build is old as kitten. I used a very similar one (except for gear) like 1 month after launch allready.

If you thought this was a well kept secret, then you seriously have to reconsider.

Also finding out others builds just by watching them fight is one of the easiest things to do in guild wars. You surely must be pretty paranoid when you make a fuss about this thread.

1. Elementalist
2. Ranger
3. Mesmer

My 3 biggest wishes:

1: Give us a unique ACTIVE defensive mechanism. Thiefs got stealth and a kittenton of dodges + above average mobility. Mesmers got stealth and clones. Necros have death shroud + plague and I could go on for any other class out there. We seem to be the onliest class that does not has any sort of active reliable defense. Back on first days I was getting the impression you want us to have the best healing capabilities. But judging from how much you went overboard with warriors selfheal abillities I started to doubt that.

2: Rework / Reorganize traits and skills. Alot of traits don’t make any sense at all, and sometimes it would give us more building options if certain traits would be moved down 1 or maybe even 2 tiers. This applies to any class, not just the elementalist tho. Weapon skills and utilities are a complete mess right now. More then half of the utilities are lacking compared to the more useful ones. Same goes for some of the weapon skills.

3: Make Conjure skills an instant cast. Alot of times I would have used a conjurable weapon if it wouldn’t take that long to get them out.

LordByron.8369:

oZii.2864:

I think they would really have to keep it as close to it’s current damage levels right now to save it.

+1000 to this…
boosting stats is a lazy and useless solution.

They need to keep either ferocity on par with zzojia or boos significantly power.

Boosting power to the level of berserker, soldier, or valkyrie would make these sets obsolete.

Sometimes I think you guys want too much. On set to fit for every role. Celestial should be none: neither the best DPS nor the best defensive option. It allready has the most amount of stats as it is. Which can be very powerful in certain setups. Getting crit DMG that is on par with berserker or valkyrie or cavalier is just a no go. As this would make the 3 mentioned kinda less atractive either.

florence.1674:

As I see this thread fall out of the first page of the balance forums, I am beginning to wonder, do we really have a problem or do people not care about the state of elementalists anymore?

The reason I stopped posting here is because I cannot take this discussion too seriously. Alot of our current problems are there not because elementalist is in a bad state but because they created a very ridiculous meta and introduced alot of questionable balance patches. I don’t even have the feeling ANet itself knows where they want this classes to be.

What needs to be done, for all classes not just the elementalist is that there needs to be a cleanup for traits. EVERY single class has buggy, not viable or simply unpractical traits. Some traits on the other hand are way over the top. It’s a complete mess actually. Same goes for weapon and utility skills. And again it applies to any class.

Before even attempting to balance they should basically start to clean thos things up.

Second reason I don’t post here anymore is because most eles have a very unrealistic and biased point of view. The majority here just wants some serious buffs. I believe this would make the meta game an even worse one.

Ether renewal short by 1 tick? Making first ticks tick smaller then last so we get EVEN MORE penalized then allready when interrupted? Where is that a buff exactly?

Scepter is mostly based on that instant burst. Without it it’s not even an option over staff or dagger anymore. Do you even play ele to make those suggestions?

They are not so huge if you dont use it. You cripple ether renewal and just giving back lightning flash what it initially was would not be huge of an impact. Other classes blinks all are stunbreaks, I don’t get why we even got it removed.

I also sense someone having trouble with scepter eles. How else is that cast time for lightning strike explained? This would break scepter by alot.

Your ele suggestions would further complicate and nerf the ele. I vote no.

Alot of these suggestions are way too OP imo. Some make sense tho.

GW2 PvP community, out of all the other games I’ve played yet is by far the worst for me. It’s not everyone but a huge number just likes to complain, accuse and insult all day.

The strength of comet is that it can be cast on enemies behind walls AND that it is a blast finisher.

Freezing Gust chill duration or dmg could be increased slightly. As it is currently abit underwhelming. Would prefer chill over damage.

Jzaku.9765:

No

I do not see how you will ever be put in a situation where your personalized priority list will ever be a negative. There will be a consistent internal logic that you, the person who set the priority list, will understand fully and thus can adapt to it. This is even moreso in the case of “fields you create take priority”, you simply do not create a field untill you are ready to combo in it.

You completely ignored any other post being made. There are several examples why this could be bad. A very good one was hammer guardian. The auto attack chain gives a light field. Do you want the guardian to be allways blasting his light field for some retaliation you will most likely not need for PvE?

There should be more predictable rules to what field will be blasted but this is not the way to do it…

Maybe they could implement a possibility to get off blast finishers of certain fields, just like some projectile finishers have a certain % to trigger. For example the guardian hammer auto attack has a 20% to trigger, while a lava font has 40%, water fields (respecting the duration of the field) will have something around 80-100%?

In general I would give the higher cooldown / low duration fields a higher % to trigger.

This won’t make anyone happy neither and has just as many flaws as the suggested idea, so I would be careful with those values for every field.

Just because you guys don’t like / use it it’s no bad weapon. I agree that the focus fire skills have to change, but I’m perfectly fine with any other spell on it.

Lowering CD’s here and there couldn’t hurt tho.

I don’t think a teleport or a rush would fit to the focus theme, as it is more a suvivability / control weapon. And it fits that role pretty well. Just change the fire skills to something more reliable and I’m fine.

Don’t try to make it another dagger, or give it another Ride the Lightning just because you want to try out something else then offhand dagger…

I like the blindness on fire shield and the lower cast time for fire wall idea.

The biggest buff you proposed (for me) was the fire and water AA buffs. Slowing down Hurl is more of a nerf for me (even if you can combo projectile better), so is your dust devil change. Dust devil allready is incredibly easy to dodge, I wonder how it would work out in your version.

The biggest drawback would be arcane skills tho. If you need to cast them they will be far less effective, maybe even entirely broken given there is nothing to compensate (except a tad more faster dragon tooth + fire and water AA).

I still doubt I would use shatterstone. But I guess I would need to try it first.

If yi could make a wishlist:

-fire AA has to change. (something like you allready proposed)
-shatterstone needs to be more reliable. (faster cast or animation)
-give dragon tooth ground targeting.

for scepter.

for focus I would like to see replacements or workarounds for the fire skills.

So you want to nerf air burst eles AKA fresh air?

The thing is you cannot just imply by others speccing deep into water or arcane that those 2 traitlines are essential for being ele. It’s an overexaggeration and this thread could not be taken seriously without analyzing the problems of an ele with a cool minded head.

Mash Hog.5672:

The lack of survivability pidgeon-holes Elementalist into points in Water and Arcana which make it very difficult for Elementalists to expand their traitlines.
The lack of survivability also pidgeon-holes Elementalists to run cantrips which makes it difficult for them to use other utilities.

The fun part is in my current tPvP build I have 0 points in water and 10 in arcane. I kinda agree that alot of our traits don’t make any sense at all and a rework is not debatable. But I don’t share the oppinion that we have to rely on arcane and water traits. The current change with reduced attunements helped me alot btw.

I also don’t use /rarely use any cantrip at all. Most of them are no stun breakers anymore, which reduced their use for me ALOT.

Xunleashed.5271:

3) bad designed weapon skills
Focus any1 ?

I love focus. Just the fire skills are absolutely useless. Other then that it’s way superior to dagger offhand for me…

The vast majority is sheer blind for anything else that is not D/D.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Nothing is viable or optimal in WvW/spvp if you don’t have the player skills. It is as simple and straight forward as that. I roam now with s/f and I ’m performing better now than I ever did with d/d or s/d. Fgs, lightning flash and my permanent 25% speed is all I need for mobility.

The ele (PvP) community stopped looking for new builds after they had their 0/10/0/30/30 D/D build. Anything else is just not “viable”…

This is one of the major reasons eles are currently leading the whining ladder.

Sure eles ain’t on the top but it’s far away from being as worse as some people make it up.

scerevisiae.1972:

20% more dmg if within 600 of target and if endurance isn’t full. That is, most of the time you’re not getting 20% more dmg.

Well first off, it is 10 % dmg when your endurance is full. Quite good with perma vigor and if you don’t dodge around like a brainless monkey on about every skill thrown at you.
Secondly: I’m within 600 range almost all the time anyway. In tPvP you are basically force to go close to contest points. ALso there are plenty of melee classes. Most of the classes will try to close up on you. So it’s far easier to pull off then the 10% dmg on burn (in fire) or 10% dmg when health above 90% (water)

Strongly disagree. Unless they totally take you by surprise or start within 600 of you, shatter mesmers will almost always open with iZerker (GS) or iWarlock (staff) and 1-hit from either of these plus an auto-attack or 2 will definitely take you below 90% HP, in which case DS becomes 100% useless.

Beside the general uselessness of DS in practical terms, i.e. unless you’re 100% bunker you will spend most of the fight below 90% HP, there’s also the stat advantage of water.

IZerker /IWarlock are so easyly dodged for anyone that has dueled mesmers more then 10 times.
I’m a zerker. Most of the fight is almost over within 10 seconds (and even that only if the fight went long enough). DiamondSkin is basically not what my build is aiming for, but well I got 5 points to spare and no other minor trait is worth it.
It helps ME a ton with necros and mesmer. Sure a good player will find a way to play around, but that one initial fear blown away by the necro can really make the difference. Same for shatter immo bomb.

Your 30 earth gives you an extra 300 toughness. On top of say 2.3K armour, 300 toughness translates to ~11.5% less direct damage. Versus a 10K shatter combo, that’s ~1150 less dmg you’d take with 30 earth.

With 30 water, you’d have an extra 3000HP, which together with the extra 300 healing power (an extra 300HP healed by healing ripple alone), is way more useful versus burst classes as it can (and often does) mean the difference between surviving a burst or not.

With S/F I don’t have many heal skills. Earth on the other hand gives me -20% recharge on earth skills. The earth focus skills are the key to my survivability. Once you have truly gone focus you will not return to dagger offhands.

I value 20% dmg, 300 armor, -20% recharge on my key suvival skills, and an occasionally useful Diamond Skin more useful then anything water could offer. I really only miss the water 15 trait.

I would like to see how a fire aura saved my life, as I solely run S/F.

I currently prefer earth over water trait line. I just spec water for the 15 minor trait. But 15 points just for that is abit too much of an investment.

Almost any traitline is heavy gimmicky. There are alot of trash rated traits no sane man would pick. Not only for the ele tho.

I allways end up picking earth line recently. Giving me 20% more dmg. Diamond Skin is just a filler since there ain’t too many options.

Traits should be about choosing the best ones for your build. For me it feels like Anet allready chose for me, since there ain’t too much solid options in those lines.

DSkin is very useful especially versus mesmers (shatter mesmers won’t ILeap snare you) and necros (most start the fight with a fear, even power ones). It saved my butt a couple of times. I don’t run a heal build to keep me up above the 90% and i don’t run tanky (zerker + valk).

I don’t think buffing auras is the key to make elementalist players happy.

I personally was never relying on auras and I don’t really want to.

They should switch around traits abit and get rid of the useless ones. Nothing gamebreaking tho. Don’t want this class ending up being a warrior v. 2.0.

I’ll be honest. I use focus more then offhand daggers. It offers us some of the best defense skills and allows me to survive as a fully geared zerker ele.

I don’t think focus needs much of a rework. I find almost any skill worth it EXCEPT fire 4 and 5. Fire 4 would be awesome with a faster animation similar to Ring of Fire (Dagger #4).

In my oppinion it’s the staff that needs more attention (lightning especially). And scepter fire autoattack and water #2.

Eles are so easy to play, I trained my hamster to play one for me.

1- ALOT more frequent fixes and balance attempts.
2- More game modes (even tho it is called Guild Wars, where are the guild wars?).
3- More incentives to do PvP rather then the rank, skins, and the low gold gains.
4- Developers sharing their attention to more then just living stories and filling up the gem shop.
5- A more grown up community.

I played Elementalist from day 1. I got any class on 80 right now but I can barely enjoy any other class then my elementalist or my engineer for a longer period of time. I kind of play any aspect of the game but I would say I’m more of a PvPer playing tPvP and WvW in equal parts. I enjoy tPvP more currently because of the blobbing in WvW and the almost not existing roaming community (I don’t enjoy zergs)-

I was using the so famous auramentalist build and even some builds that represent the current ele meta like 1 month after release allready. I was aware back then allready that those kind of builds, especially our mobility would be nerfed badly. So I tried to play around.

It’s just my personal taste but I don’t like D/D. It’s way to predictive and repeative and makes it easy for your enemy to read you.

I honestly believe that there won’t be any major changes soon enough that bring us up the ladder, either by nerfing the other classes down to an acceptable level or by buffing the elementalist. ANet didn’t prove balance was a high priority yet. And alot of decisions and fixes went the wrong way.

I won’t last long in this game anymore anyway, since a very promising AAA title is just around the corner (no not TESO).

To bring me back here ANet should better have some work done, not by creating and promoting new living events, but by actually making the PvP part of this game enjoyable again.

All I can say: yes it’s super annoying to play tPvP as an ele. You get discredited alot of times. When your team wins, it was the others carrying you. When you lose it’s clearly the eles fault because he was to “selfish” to bring a “viable” class.

Still I don’t want to see this class becoming the next warriors. There is a reason I play elementalist: it’s the competition. The feeling of joy when you showed those ignorant people what a well played ele still can do.

I’m all in for some small buffs, but please ANet, don’t overdo it. I would instantly leave this game when ele would get to the same absurd level warriors are right now.

I personally would like it more if other classes were toned down a bit to a similar level. This balance rollercoaster we had since launch is just not healthy in the long run, worsening up balance even more.

Moon.6371:

Making someone immune to conditions does not only shut down that damage incoming, but since cc is labeled condition in this game, it also prevents getting cc´ed. That alone is crazy.

CC is not labeled as a condition. Fear is. Starting off the fight with a fear is something you can now not do when engaging an DS ele.

I had run DS myself. It’s not too hard to get 1,6k HP off me. Eles still have the smallest initial healthpool and investing 30 points in earth will decrease your healing done by quite a good amount.

DS is only successfull vs condition classes that cannot adapt to do thos 1,6k dmg before throwing around their condis like crazy just like they are used to be.

The solution is a healthy amount of condition cleanses and some pressure (burst DPS done by you).

A warrior committing suicide after teaming with 3 eles because he want to let the enemy win.

It will still be a much more horrific place to be for a stealth class then GW2. AoE here is very predictable and dodgeable. In wildstar you will have almost no room to breath. We will have to wait how things work out tho. They have some more then just 2 people working on classes so balance patches will be there in a much more frequent way.

Elementalist: Simply because (almost) every other class feels boring, repeative, braindead and takes away the competition I seek.

Also stealthers in Wildstar have to be more aware of AoE. Every attack there will kinda be AoE. Ye they seriously ruined stealth in GW2. Heck I even usually play stealth classes myself but that system in here just made me step away from stealth classes for my entire life.

Well, thank you all for your advice.

A pro P/D thief won’t be hurt by me blocking / blinding / dodging his CnD, as he just uses my clones / phantasms to restealth and will try anything to keep a safe distance.

In a WvW scenario he utilizes the mobs around him.

Reflection might help, maybe even my focus phantasm (eats projectiles) but those skills have far too high CDs, too long for me to catch the thief, while he’s “helpless” (he still has almost infinite stealth possibilities).

My condition removal as a mesmer is limited. Still I run condi duration REDUCTION food + Melandru runes therefore, and 2 condi removal skills (null field, condi transfer).

In the current state I kind of just search for the stealthed thief, while his conditions slowly burn me down. Running away works some times. But no good thief will be outrun by a mesmer.

The only chance I have is when the thief gets too confident, ignoring my phantasms, or when i get a lucky knockback / stun in the middle of his CnD animation. But then again he has Refuge to reset the fight and start chasing me over …

Hello.

I play WvW and sPvP both on equal base. I started with a thief main when this game was launched and decided to try out different classes. Now I finally played any class with almost any spec i could get my hands on. Currently I switched my main character to a mesmer (stealthy phantasm mesmer) and I have good success against almost any class/spec.

There is just 1 spec i never managed to win against unless my foes were complete morons: the P/D thief. I even played that spec for myself to see if there is a weak spot, without any success.

I’m clueless and can’t seem to find an answer. Maybe some more P/D veterans could give me some insight on this?

I can confirm that the OP is definitely not making up some numbers. I run complete knights armor + weapons and i was able to pull of some lucky 3.5k on squishys. With some vuln/might and more power/crit dmg from gear 5k should be possible.

This trait is a beast now, I even used the daze mantra for 2 on demand instant interrupts. Watch them burn (ofc only if you know when to use those skills)…

Which gearset, bufffood, Sigils, and Runes / Orbs do you use?

Sorry I had to use a Proxy Site and couldn’t read the comments, if those infos are located there…

Ostricheggs.3742:

Necros are insane, anyone who argues otherwise has never played an engi

I indeed played an condition engineer. Way longer then I have every played my necro. Up to now my engi was way more capable of getting almost any offensive condition on his target then my necro. The recent patch just changed that fact. I have to agree necros got a lot stronger with latest patch and I wouldn’t mind if they revert some of those changes.

I can’t agree that HGH builds were the most destructive condition builds for engis. HGH builds lack versatility you gain from kits. Before this patch my necro felt somehow equal, maybe a little bit inferior to my engi in terms of mobility and utility. Now he’s gotten a freaking laser beam which cuts trough just anything around.

In my oppinion with this patch my necro surpassed the condi pressure my engi could keep up. I still somewhat have similar results whichever of those two I play (be it sPvP or WvW).

TLDR: I don’t like that you kind of picture the condition engineer far inferior then the necro. He isn’t when played properly. I still somewhat agree the recent necro changes were a little too much.

VicisPatronus.5418:

Learn Learn Learn? Use different tactics? LOL. I’ve been on T1 too, main problem is that we dont have as many big and active wvw guilds. But alone Cry Havoc, PRXM, MM etc can wipe you. The difference is you have plenty of that size. Give us 4-5 more of that size+a night raid team that is strong, and we’d have equal opportunity to win.

Ye we are all worse then anyone on Gunnars Hold. You guys clearly are the top notch skilled players everyone of us wants to be. There’s no other way to win against you but outnumbering.

Can you please teach me?

Wow, just wow. Do these guys really defend the ridiculous state of confusion with “don’t attack” or “stack condition removal”?
There are SEVERAL other ways for ANY, yes ANY class out there (and with any i mean mesmers too) to deal dmg coming from other sources. By the time now I have any class at lvl 80 except the warrior (and those usually don’t stack confusion), and played almost any build I have heard of with them. I haven’t even tried a build that SOLELY did damage with confusion only.
If you look at confusion this way you consider it as a full stun or instant death if you keep attacking. There are classes out there that can maintain 5+ confusion stacks up for almost endlessly with the right traits + runes + weapons + bufffood.

Stacking condition removal is not helping you anyway since those classes (mesmer + engineer) can easily reapply confusion the moment you removed it. Engineers even cover it with loads of other different conditions. With my engineer I can keep up 10+ stacks bleeding + burn + chill + cripple + poison + vulnerability covered with some other less frequent conditions. A mesmer can cover it with staff clones + staff autohit or greatsword clones + greatsword autohits and the right traits.
Most condition removal has far longer recharge rates then those skills that apply confusion. And condition specced classes tend to outlast you, since they are built more tanky then glass cannons.

And even then there are people here saying it would be BAD to be a glass cannon when fighting a confusion-heavy-class. How is being a glass cannon worse then being a tank? Did somehow armor or toughness start giving condition resistance?

This thread is just another sample of mesmers (maybe even some engis) not willing to face the big problem, defending an obviously broken mechanic.

I had the pleasure of argueing with MrBig back before launch on guildwars2guru forums. Even back then he claimed thieves weren’t viable and pressed into the “onliest semi-viable” build called venom share.

That was right before the launch, when thief was in one of it’s strongest states. Other thieves just hopped in supporting his claims. In the end there was no discussion possible due to the fact no “dedicated” thief will agree with you.

Last week you called us out for only attacking your server, which wasn’t true. Now you call us out for desperated nightcapping.

I guess next week you will call us out for even fighting back. There is barely any complaint about drakkar so far, even from our (dzag) side, even tho they keep dominating our homelands and maintain an income of atleast 300 points.

It looks for me like we really hurt some egos last week on RoF.

Well currently it’s all in drakkars hands. Whatever they feel they want to torture more will make the last place.

As much as i like the WvW concept it is massively imbalanced for every tier below the first 2 maybe 3. They should not make matchups based on rankings but based on WvW-participation/population. But theres just no other way then ranking to judge that participation.

I don’t see a satisfying way of getting rid of that imbalance without making us all getting huge queue times.

Krosan.2890:

silvershadez.8421:

If you are RoF: I didn’t ever heared of some1 doing it and I strongly doubt anyone from RoF would fall for such an advertisement. In this case it sounds like another agenda to make dzagonur look worse then any other server or just like another cheap excuse.

He’s not Rof as its quite obvious a German server recruiting English guilds won’t happen often… Not sure why you even mentioned the possibly as it seems quite obvious.

There has been so much trash talk about dzag lately. Alot of that was coming from RoF fellas so I’m sure you can see why i wrote both options.

adherry.1592:

If i got that right we first went for Dzagonur, because they try to get WvW Guilds from our server for weeks. Almost every day someone is Advertising that they would pay the server change for WvW-Guilds willing to switch to their server. They really annoyed our Leaders

If you are a Drakkar: Lot’s of our guilds moved to your server. The chance is high that they didn’t advertise you to get on dzagonur but to build up their guild on their “new” homeserver.

If you are RoF: I didn’t ever heared of some1 doing it and I strongly doubt anyone from RoF would fall for such an advertisement. In this case it sounds like another agenda to make dzagonur look worse then any other server or just like another cheap excuse.

Contiguous.1345:

This is even more boring than last week.
Drakkar have a comfortable, even unassailable lead and Dzagonur are content to play second fiddle.

Right now, the only fighting is a few RoF diehards trying to recover a small part of their homeland against massive occupation from both opponents and getting treated to a contemptuous beating.

As far as I can see there’s no action anywhere else.

I can attest you that you are blind. The last hour our (dzag) zerg tried to get back our homelands from drakkar and those that couldn’t join our homelands went for drakkar borderlands instead.

Stop acting like you are the victim here. It’s pathetic…

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

That guy doesn’t play on the Ring of Fire.

I’m fully aware of that. I still had a similar conversation in the past thread a week ago from somme felly from RoF too. You find those people on any server. Even on mine.

In the end every1 thinks his server is better then those others. If you aren’t on top it’s because the others outnumber you, cheat, hack or abuse things they shouldn’t or they just not play it fair…. I’ve heard so many excuses yet and it starts all over again in any thread. It’s a bad habit but the most common among us.