Guild Wars 2

Lava Font had an immediate tick back in beta 3 years ago but they felt the guaranteed damage was too strong in PvP

Different versions of Lava Font e.g via ‘Lava Tomb’ and PvE monster sources of Lava Font still do tick immediately.

It irks me that they’ve never learnt their lesson about spammy passive plays that are dumb to watch; they did acknowledge that the presence of S/D thieves and their petting zoo ranger/full signet warriors approach from a year and half ago was the wrong way to go; yet flash forward to the present, we have a Tempest/Herald/Reaper rock-paper-scissors meta that relies on Diamond Skin and passive Herald boons

The AoE spam in team fights is still bad with the heavy amounts of AoE CC; it’s at least better than the EarthShaker hambow spams from before but different professions, same mistakes.

And of course the feel that they are spending HoT money marketing the broken crap instead of fixing things (I know that funding development doesn’t really work that way but still).

alain.1659:

Well I did not buy the exp. And do not think I will. New specs for my favourite professions reall suck! I loved lb ranger, what I got? A bloody tank. I loved my support tank guard. What I got? Trapper pew pew ranger wannabe with LESS range. I loved my ele. What I got? Another bloody tank.

So it should not be free. It should cost money I agree. But it should worth it. 3 years and still there are so many core bugs. I really hoped a nice bug fix when HoT came out. But nooo morr shinieees.

So fix the bugs, make core specs fine (not more powerful or even equal. All I ask is fine) and let me play my loved classes as I like in competitive. Not the way you think is right. Then me, wife and other friends will get the bloody exp without a heartbeat.

I’m curious, since when was damage oriented LB ranger ever great in pve, let alone being viable competitively?

I agree somewhat though, that they completely went along with pingeonholing ranger/guardian/ele into bunker roles, they used to at least be fun for pubstomping with the less conventional zerker amulet builds but now they totally just don’t work.

On the otherhand, now you have soldier’s amulet revenants who get 25 might stacks and high fury/protection uptime for their team just for breathing while they rip your face off with OP skills on low cooldowns along with great defensive actives
(well, some risk due to lack of condi cleanses and boon convert but w/e they are so safe)

Opc.4718:

Yeah it triggers with a radius of 180, pulls in anyone standing 240 away, and locks you into space of 90 where you can’t move without bumping the sides. The new visual effects don’t really reflect the nature of the trap which might seem confusing – especially since it’s easy to cover it with other symbols and combo fields.

Actually, even if you somehow manage get out of the 90 range after being pulled in by it, e.g with stun break/stability, you would still get knocked around if you’re still in the 240 range.

Albeit buggy as it is, every professions do have methods to deal with it, albeit some are more robust than others;
- teleport/shadowstep (thief/mes/ele)
- having at least 3 stacks of stability (tempest earth overload worth mentioning since it’s a shorter cooldown but requires planning)
- staying still and using blocks (guard/rev/warrior/engi), invul (ele/mes) or daze/fear/knock/stunning (mes/necro/ranger, the latter 2’s only real counters) the DH so he can’t hit while you’re immobile.

Opc.4718:

They “fixed” the visual noise so dragon’s maw is a tiny little circle on the ground. It’s not technically invisible or bugged.

Refer to the blue patch in the bottom right corner:

The CC barrier’s radius of 240 is significantly bigger than the tiny circle’s 90 though, and it knocks you around when you try to move ANYWHERE while inside it, so it does seem buggy to people who don’t know about it.

If it was more like Ring of Warding I think people wouldn’t be complaining.

Scepter is good when:
- where things are prone to dragon’s tooth
- you have to be the main/only source of might/fury and thus the gains in damage as a party outweighs personal DPS with staff or dagger
- you have Meteorlogicus made from back when scepter/LH was the best thing evar

Summary:
Pugging dungeons/fractals and Stronghold in sPvP for assaulting NPCs

Hovering over your condition duration will show your total condition duration, and the TOTAL condition duration of for each specific condition duration increases. Condition duration is capped at +100% though the skill tooltips will still try to show things as if it could go over.

Example:
- 20% condition duration from koi cake
- 85% burn duration from sigil of smoldering, burning precision trait and rune of balthazar
- you will have +100% duration for your burns which will be shown as such by the hover-over in the hero panel (rather than 105%)

Unlike ingame, http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ will show the condition specific durations separately as they are rather than the combined value.

Aomine.5012:

grahf.7540:

Watch this. Tempest staff build now appears to be the highest DPS staff build.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kw7zQi-t1s

Yeah I think people really should try out for their own.

It’s really different from pure fire spam Ele which I really like it.

I used to hate playing Ele in PVE because of this. (I want to be AOE cannon build, but I find that playing that is too boring because our highest dps rotation is spamming /stacking in fire).

I agree, having the additional Overloads makes the gameplay so much more interactive beyond Fireball, Lava Font and Meteor Shower.

People seem to forget to factor in the ~10 pulsing stacks of might from overload fire and ~15 stacks of vulnerability from overload air. Taking Harmonious Conduit also helps negate the damage loss of not taking Bountiful Power or Aquamancer’s Training quite a bit if you save the most damaging parts of your rotations for when it’s on.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Enzo.3906:

I’m excited for GW2’s prospects for China, but I sure hope that this game doesn’t go in a direction because of Kongzhong’s demands.

Even though NA/EU have been with this game for over a year, China can be a major player in the direction of the game due to the playerbase side.

For example, NA/EU would really like to see Cantha, but China (Kongzhong) would be very much against that, which could lead to scrapping that entire project.

That already happened. Cantha was originally part of the game but it was removed because China wouldn’t agree to let GW2 there unless it was removed. That’s why there was a giant hole in Divinities Reach for a year, that used to be the Canthan district which was supposed to eventually lead us into Cantha, but China said no.

China weren’t the only people offended by the Canthan district. The Canthan buildings were a mix of Korean, Japanese and Chinese architecture which offended all of them.

runeblade.7514:

zencow.3651:

Eles are both trait and stat starved. They can only reach high damage only by taking every single damage trait there is, yet these heavily compete with survivability traits.

Actually, I do understand this. The thing is, it isn’t ele specific.

This IS ele specific. An ele using simply using a zerker amulet without trait damage boosting hits like a wet-noodle, as opposed to other professions taking a zerker amulet and benefiting from it immediately.

Thieves get their damage bonus traits naturally through minor traits that can be obtained through any line.

Warriors don’t even need might stacks or any damage traits to deal high damage, for warriors might and Destruction Empowered are a luxury that makes them stronger.

For Eles on the other hand, their skill damage coefficients are incredibly low; might stacks are a necessity to dent people and can’t afford use damage traits like Stone Splinter and Vital Striking in a healthy way. Due to the multiplicative nature of these damage traits, it’s either stacking them all and be the glass cannon x2.5 damage insta-kill burster or stack none since it’s simply not efficient enough to only have 1 or 2.

When you have enough trait points to pump into every +damage % trait possible to achieve a multiplicative effect and get x2 to x2.5 damage before factoring in crit damage.

Ele is PvEKing.

runeblade.7514:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

You also appear to not be playing against good players. Any player worth his stuff knows that in a team fight elementalists are at the top of the list of who to focus first. This happens to such a degree that oftentimes you end up with a thief dedicated to killing you before you can do any damage, which is really easy unless you go full-on bunker and then you aren’t threatening anyway.

I played against a rq46 guardian and rq 42 thief in a duel and won.

So does that mean they are not skilled?

Probably forgot how to deal with eles since they are so extinct.

Eles are both trait and stat starved. They can only reach high damage only by taking every single damage trait there is, yet these heavily compete with survivability traits. You are caught between speccing for damage or survivability but no matter how you spec anywhere between these two extremes, eles aren’t viable at a competitive level since any build you make would have a weakness. There’s versatility in the way you can trait but you can’t out-play someone by adapting the way you play since your kit has everything but not enough of it when you need it. Having useful skills bound to different attunements and sustained damage being on one means you are predictable and get into lose-lose situations as soon as you start having to play defensively. Signet of Restoration at eles be able to maintain the upper hand since they could keep dishing out damage without pause but it’s PvP nerf and the shift to condi meta that forces Ether Renewal on eles took this advantage away.

In WvW due to the abundance of stats you can achieve the necessary damage and survivability thresholds that can make ele viable but in sPvP you cannot do this.

In summary:
Zerker/Valkyrie burst builds: heavily reliant on landing high cooldown skills.
Bunker builds: deals negligible damage yet still gets wrecked 1v1 by mesmer, necro, thief, warrior and ranger and can’t hold point against an engi. Exceptionally bad at holding point 1v2. Little to no decapping capability and no presence in teamfights.
Balanced builds: heavily reliant on maintaining high might stacks and burst skills must all be landed perfectly in succession to secure a kill.

It’s abit more elaborate than this but you have to play ele enough for yourself to understand.

Zelyhn.8069:

In every possible PvE situation berserker (and assassin) gear is better. Due to its synergistic power it is stronger by a large margin.

Mark my word: there is absolutely no reason why someone should choose any other gear type.

If you wish to have more defensive possibilities then work on your traits, utilities, and weapons. But gear must be optimal for direct damage. This is because the marginal defense return from switching traits is drastically better than that of switching gear.

Sadly though, when doing zerg events the bearbows, GS mesmers and staff guardians scale up the mobs while doing poor DPS and dilute your contribution so much it really is so demoralizing to be zerker. I swap out the zerker+scholar armor for PVT and boon duration and only keep zerker trinkets when I go Living Story.

Oh and actually if you take PVT and stack damage traits, you can actually do more damage than zerker 0/10/0/30/30 but it’s generally harder to do the former than the latter.

emikochan.8504:

InFluEnZa.6908:

It has always been there.

It was changed a few months after launch, it used to chill iirc. My first ever build used it, took everything that could chill into AC, fun times…

No, it used to confuse. Glyph of Storms in Water attunement is the one that chills.

It’s just how it works to prevent a stat loop.

spoj.9672:

The issue is that anet is incompetant at fixing exploits. I cannot believe they havent realized that invisible walls dont work. You cannot blame players for abusing something you have failed to fix beyond count. The entire map of arah is a huge jumping puzzle and its actually pretty fun to explore. To stop exploiters using this to their advantage they need to fix boss and reward triggers… Skipping lupi and several bosses in p3/p4 is the real issue here, not the actual skips.

It’s because those who work on dungeons get moved away/fired so they make the same mistakes over and over again. After the initial CoF bans Anet also became much less vigilant about banning exploiters.

The first thing they did back when TA was jumpable to the Nightmare Tree (still actually possible to do the jump despite invisible wall), they made it so you had to finish the other bosses before it triggers which was the right way to go. I believe that was Jeff Grub.

But then the dungeon team got moved away so then they took forever placing invisible walls everywhere, CM being most notorious. Then when HotW’s and CoE’s jumping puzzles surfaced, they finally got their act together and fixed the trigger sequence along with placing more invisible walls. That was Hrouda.

Now we have part-time dungeon team who are back to square one in dealing with this issue and Arah’s added invisible wall counts are now higher than the infamous CM back in it’s day.

Balefire.7592:

Shufflepants.9785:

Taunt (Condition Suggestion)

There, fixed that for you.

This exists in the game already.
One of the evil trio in Brisban Wildlands uses it.

So that’s how I died there…
I don’t think condi remove worked though, way too OP

Aberrant.6749:

They are all far more vulnerable to being countered… Eng 3 btw… really?… that’s presuming eng 2 does didlly squat. Necro 2 also suffers from only being able to stop a single stomper… and is easily countered. How about this then… swap ele 2 for necro 2 but make it a gust of wind instead to keep it thematically ele. I mean it does much of the same thing right? -.-

Sure, if eles get a buff to their CCs so they could actually force out stabilities before getting downed and their downed #3 actually did anything, and if conditions inflicted by the necro are all instantly wiped the moment they are downed.

So they said back in development that champs would get new AoE skills as there are more players. So when is that happening?

BlackBeard.2873:

The only thing that needs to be changed about dragon’s tooth is the no-damage bug when you are cc’d after the cast and before it lands. A slightly shorter cast-time wouldn’t hurt.

Shorter cast time has already been suggested and ignored.

The no damage when hard cc’ed is caused by the cast animation not being allowed to finish and occurs with all delayed aoe ele skills including eruption and ice spike. Cancel casting by pressing escape does the same thing and can be used to your advantage for pure zoning since you can start casting something else sooner (but you’d feel dumb if it actually did hit but does no damage). For awhile DT specifically got cancelled by dodge but thank goodness they fixed that.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Aberrant.6749:

zencow.3651:

runeblade.7514:

zencow.3651:

How to stomp mesmers like a pro: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=56s0toOVCL0

Apply the same to thieves and eles but also use a teleport and you’re sure to get ’em most of the time.

You’re in the wrong thread. This thread is about elementalist vapor form.

It’s a proof of concept. Double tap + teleport does work on eles with you time it right. Eles by norm has to use 3 skills to achieve one effect, it’s perfectly reasonable enough that other classes have to try a little harder stomping them.

Both are based on player error… I wouldn’t consider either a counter because of that.

Why the kitten does eng have such an easily countered downed state when it’s the class that needs the most input to achieve a result? Eng should have the best downed state in the game if that was their criteria. Sounds like very odd criteria for balance btw…

That is entirely untrue. In terms of sheer number of skills to manage, if that’s what you mean, elementalists are at baseline equal to 3-kit engineers, and that is ignoring all conjures and glyphs, as well as attunement changes themselves.
Elementalists are also unequivocally the highest skillcap class in the game, if you happened to mean that instead.
That being said, engi downstate could probably use a buff.

Call it what you want, skill/luck/prediction/player error but if it stops the opponent from doing that they want, it’s a counter.

On the topic of downed skills:
The downed skills of the engineer actually suits the class and sPvP purpose in bunkering though. Engis have access to knockblack/blowout/pull that come in many flavors that the opponent can’t out stability and stunbreak. They downed skills are also hard-CC oriented to contest the point even when they are down if they had exhausted the opponent’s stability/stunbreak/invul options when they were alive i.e. skillful play reward.
Hint: You can cancel your 2 with [Esc] if suspecting a cancel stomp dodge and it will be back in time for the next stomp, which if it lands then your 3 is up which is very long node stalling along with warrior’s downed state.

Vapor Form doesn’t even contest a point and Grasping Earth is useless. I would agree with making Grappling Hook a faster cast though.

If it’s a thief that downed you then you’re screwed no matter who you are if the situation is still a 1v1.

Massively off-topic:
Engis and Eles are pretty equal. You can basically count kits as attunements and toolbelt skills as utility skills.

The difference between a pistol/shield 3-kit engi, popularly nade, bomb and toolkit, and an ele is that engis have much more potent skills that are on shorter cooldowns with shorter cast times, 2 blocks and much more CC as well as many conditions and pumping out much sustained damage with great access to poison.

They however have poor condi resistance outside Automated Response and don’t have access to stability and stunbreak so they have to spam their hearts out dropping bombs and throwing nades behind them when having to deal with melee while they kite.

Cantrip Eles have stunbreaks and limited stability but their sustained damage is crap and bursts comboes typically have 45+ CDs and they suffer from constant backpedal lag from having to constantly facing the opponent and can’t swap their range.

runeblade.7514:

So you prefer elementalist stays weak so that downed state 2 will be uncounterable.

Okay.

Nice straw man.

So you want the profession who doesn’t have a competitively viable option and gets downed the most, to instantly die instead?

Okay.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Against all type of targets. Players can’t dodge DT if it is followed after gale.

Assuming the target is still in DT’s aoe after it’s long long cast time. You could use 3 for 1 comboes all you want from Freezing Gust→DT→Gale to as fancy as DT→LF+Updraft, DT’s best use as a revive deterring is the only situation when it’s 1 for 1 or more yet in it’s best situation it’s under-performing.

If glass eles in tPvP could actually keep the target downed after throwing a kitchen sink of skills and cooldowns someone, they’d be much more competitive rather than simply being a gimmick.

But instead you have this scenario:
“Oh I got someone down… never mind he’s rezzed again and my burst skills are on or require skills to land that are on 45+ CDs.”

runeblade.7514:

zencow.3651:

How to stomp mesmers like a pro: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=56s0toOVCL0

Apply the same to thieves and eles but also use a teleport and you’re sure to get ’em most of the time.

You’re in the wrong thread. This thread is about elementalist vapor form.

It’s a proof of concept. Double tap + teleport does work on eles with you time it right. Eles by norm has to use 3 skills to achieve one effect, it’s perfectly reasonable enough that other classes have to try a little harder stomping them.

Phantaram.1265:

Berserker gear will be unaffected by this change decision making wise. They have all 3 damage stats on 1 gear so it’s clearly the best gear for full damage. What this change affects is gear that took 2 damage stats and 1 defensive or 2 defensive 1 damage.

For example Cavalier and Knights both give the same amount of power and toughness but Cavalier gives Crit Damage and Knights gives precision. Some builds may have already bought a lot of Cavalier because they were satisfied with the amount of crit chance they had.

After this change goes through that same person that decided to gear a lot of their pieces Cavalier may want Knights because suddenly Precision is a more valuable stat than Crit Damage. This is just 1 example.

This is the crux of things. Currently crit damage is favourable because you get more crit damage than precision gives crit chance, despite the fact that crit chance should be prioritised since crits by default do 150% damage and thus aiming for 50% crit chance Before raising crit damage would be more efficient. But since crit damage was so easy to obtain, this was not the case. However, after this change precision will be more efficient in pumping damage than crit damage I.e. Cavaliers and Valkyrie worse.

Flissy.4093:

Kalarchis.8635:

sigh

Maximum DPS builds (that means full zerker and traited that way as well,) will see about a 10% decrease in damage. 100% of that reduction comes through crit damage. Your crits will hit for slightly less. Your normal attacks will hit just as hard. You’ll still be specced for the best DPS in the game and you’ll still be able to deliver it. It’ll just be slightly less, on average, than you’re used to.

Truth be told, a lot of maximum DPS builds are going to have to regear/retrait now due to incorporating Assassin gear, which will no longer be “maximum DPS build” as critting will be, obviously, less important than power.

Berserker is now even more the only option for PvE, nothing will even touch it. No 3/6 Assassin or 3/6 Berserker. Nope. 6/6 Berserker, Berserker Weapons, Berserker Trinkets. Waiting and seeing on runes.

You forgot to mention the backpack!

I don’t see how they could nerf scholar runes when it’s rewarding you for staying >90% as an absolute squishy.

MotherKitten.6795:

zencow.3651:

It’s also how insta kill scepter spike gimmick works: Sigil of force, burning rage, bolt to the heart, tempest defense and stone splinters is x 1.05 × 1.1 × 1.25 x 1.20 × 1.1 which is 90% more damage, not just 70%. With scholar rune it’s up to 109% more or with ogre it’s 97%.

Is this why ppl like s/f, to you use the focus knockdown to trigger the Tempest Defense damage bonus?

No, focus users tend to be more pokey and use fresh air since they are more focused on staying alive rather than instant killing people. There is also only one built in KD in the form of Gale and there’s no extra burst that they have. Some do use TD but they’d be hoping Gale or Frost Bow 5 lands. It’s S/D that makes use of TD more since you have the quakeflash → kitchen or updraft→lightning strike→Phoenix and can make use of the shock auras stun for a highly powered fire grab.

How to stomp mesmers like a pro: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=56s0toOVCL0
Works better on other maps since Skyhammer is stupid. Mesmers obviously have the worst downed state since you practically have to waste no cooldowns or dodges unless he’s guarded.

Apply the same to thieves and eles but also use a teleport and you’re sure to get ’em most of the time. Oh warriors have no teleports, well what a shame.

Damage traits stack multiplicatively along with runes and sigils though for sigils it’s the sum of the two before it’s multiplied. Partly why eles are top dps in pve and why heavy arcana is a poor investment since you could reach over 90% easily but e.g losing just a single 10% trait by pumping 10 arcana means you could drop from 98% to 80%. It’s also how insta kill scepter spike gimmick works: Sigil of force, burning rage, bolt to the heart, tempest defense and stone splinters is x 1.05 × 1.1 × 1.25 x 1.20 × 1.1 which is 90% more damage, not just 70%. With scholar rune it’s up to 109% more or with ogre it’s 97%.

FYI:
One of the pve LH build variants, 25/10/10/25/0 uses burning rage, bolt to the heart, stone splinter, vital striking, bountiful power, force and night/slaying and scholar runes for up to 172% more damage. It’s one thing to use zerker but combining it with traits brings things to a whole new level.

Lastly,
Vulnerability is a flat multiplication e.g. 25 stacks is x1.25 not x1.01^25

/oldnews
Stack them good in pve

It just won’t be the same even if they try. RIP Ghostly Hero Dshots.

I’ve levelled my second lvl 80 recently so here are some tips both mechanical and economic-wise for smooth levelling:

Gear:
- Stay up to date with your gear every 10 levels, purchasable from the Trading Post
- If short on cash, you can sPvP since it now gives you more silvers, which is also significantly larger than you get from starter content. Also would let you get familiar with
- Gear with power should be prioritised. However, they are also Power/Precision gear are very popular though so they are generally more expensive unfortunately.

Weapons:
- Daggers and Staff are expensive, if you want to save some coin scepter/focus is much cheaper.
- Conjured weapons scale with your level so you can safely opt to ignore buying weapons altogether once you have the Conjurer trait and unlocked some Conjure skills.

Traits:
- 10 Earth with Stone Splinter is the most efficient starting option, giving both toughness and extra damage, you probably won’t. 10 Fire for Conjurer if opting for saving cash and using Conjure Lava Axe and Lightning Hammer exclusively.
- Experiment how you want, if you want to excel in speed clearing dungeons though you should trait and familiarise yourself with being a squishy glass cannon, otherwise it doesn’t matter.

Skills:
- Your starter heal, Glyph of Elemental Harmony is incredibly better than the others at low levels when used in Water Attunement for extra regen due to how the heal skills scale.
- Conjure Frost Bow’s number 4 skill, Ice Storm is one of the hallmarks of eles and deals a ton of damage.
- Conjure Lightning Hammer is your best source of DPS through it’s autoattack that obliterates mob with built in Blast finisher and AoE blind until you have enough trait points to make Lava Font and Fire Attunement Staff sitting or Dagger mainhand’s 100% access to Lightning Whip via Fresh Air equal/superior. Number 2 skill also provides some mobility for moving around.

Short guide to the weapons:
- Staff: Aoe Weapon, great damage in Fire Attunement, little damage elsewhere. Must make use of comboes especially Blast finishers in Lava Font, Geyser and Healing Rain to be effective. Support aspect only shines in organized groups (ironically at the extreme organized groups don’t need this support in PvE and it’s better if you sat in Fire all day). Can feel very mind-numbing with all the ground targeting with extended use.

- Scepter: Burst damage, poor sustained damage since all of the auto-attacks are poor. Stacks might very well via Blasts in fire fields from either off-hand. Main damage skills: Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, Air auto-attack.

- Dagger Mainhand: Great sustained damage with some burst. Limited to 300-600 range. (Avoid melee hits by kiting and hitting from max range and chill/cripple through Frozen Burst and Ring of Earth). Lightning Whip and Burning Speed are your main damage dealers. NB: All auto-attacks apart from Lightning Whip extremely weak.

- Focus: Defensive weapon with great condition remove and for trivializing ranged encounters. Weapon defining skills: Swirling Wind, Magnetic Wave, Obsidian Flesh, Comet.

- Dagger Offhand: Multi-purpose in mobility, damage with a heal. NB: Churning Earth only worth using for might stacking/while melee mobs are walking towards you especially if using dagger main hand since Lightning Whip deals better DPS.

Signet of Stamina needs a desperate nerf.

Are warriors meant to be the best at evasion too?

Warrior’s Signet of Stamina’s 50% endurance regen is higher than ranger’s Natural Vigor since it got nerfed from 50 to 25%. They also have similar access to vigor via traits and of course rangers have a few evade skills while Warriors only have one via Whirlwind Attack but I feel this overall this puts warrior way too close to the ranger’s evasiveness given their health/armor differences.

And now since you are halving the base vigor uptime of guardians and mesmers, this pretty much makes their endurance regen equal to Signet of Stamina unless boon duration is invested in and again is uncomfortably shifting up the Warrior’s evasiveness relatively.

That’s fine and all until…

A wild staff guardian appears!

I like cantrips not just for the regen and vigor but also for tide turning comboes: Quakeflash and Cleansing Fire Grab.

Armor of Earth CD sucks but the stability is really important and in keeping the pressure on without having to constantly dodge warriors and thus lose to Heal Sig among various other situations. With the extra AoE from Earth’s Embrace trait, it lets you have it up whenever the warrior pops BS and you can’t soft CC/blind them.

It’s also getting buffed to a base cooldown of 75 and thus 60 when traited which will be a pretty major bonus since we’d have access to 1/3 coverage of AoE assuming Earth’s Embrace is also receiving the same treatment.

Mist Form isn’t worth slotting.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

zencow.3651:

Noonan.7659:

As with all damaging conditions, the damage ticks are determined by whatever stack does the -most- damage and has time left. Burning damage doesn’t get immediately overwritten.

Except there’s a queue system where older applications are knocked off when it goes over the stack limit which makes it easy to sabotage the DPS of the stack and the sabotage stacks difficult to get rid off once they are applied.

The older applied burning doesn’t get knocked off. When it reaches 9 stacks, it stops accepting new stacks until the first, older, stack finishes.

“However, there is a cap at 9 stacks for this condition, meaning that the duration for this condition will only be increased by the first 9 sources that apply it, and all stacks that would normally increase the duration beyond the first 9 stacks will be ignored.”

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning

I see~ so unless the stack is all filled with 9 non condi powered burns then you’d be “okay”.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

I have been playing S/F in sPvP lately, and DT is already a really strong skill.

If your opponent doesn’t dodge it, they’re dead. Making it hit any harder would only add insult to injury. And there are lots of ways to make sure it gets hit. Elemental Surge (immobilizes), signet of earth (immobilizes), chills and any stun, really (earthquake, updraft, gust?)

Now if you want to talk the Shatterstone (Water 2 scepter ability)………. I mean, does anyone actually bother using this?

Updraft doesn’t leave the opponent on the ground long enough for DT to hit. Quake has too long aftercast and thus can’t be used for landing DT either. Since everyone with a brain runs Sigil of Energy, they can always dodging in time after they get up. Gale is the only way to land DT without being dodged but at 50 sec cool down and being the only knockdown on focus it can only be used when ganking and target has stun breaks used up. Gust is a staff skill.

Never been a fan of using Signet of Earth to land DT since it’s so avoidable and Elemental Surge sucks since Evasive Arcana is better for survivability whilst glassy wise pumping 30 arcana cripples your damage a lot since it’s much better to be stacking damage modifiers from other lines. Sure you could MAYBE now land DT but your air spike and Phoenix now sucks.

I like to think of it in terms of trading skills and the CDs and cast times put you far behind if it gets countered by other professions better CDs.

Frost Bow is the best trade you have. Bow 5 → 4 cancel → DT is nice when mesmers and thieves teleports away from the icestorm, but even that requires Bow 5 to hit

At the end of the day it’s the triple hit Phoenixes and air spikes that matters the most and DT can mostly only be used to deter revival of downies as I said, I’m finding that a it lacking.

I use Shatterstone for zoning but since it’s so pathetic people often don’t even bother avoiding it.

katniss.6735:

Dragon’s tooth should turn horizontal vs moving targets and home in on them. Unlimited range.

Oh, how I miss when Lightning Surge and Signet of Air had unlimited range, sniping siege weapons and people alike.

Magnetic Leap has a massive animation that gets you hit too many times in flight/while landing.

I prefer to save Magnetic Grasp for landing Burning Speed→(Fire Grab) and guarantees advantage since either one would hit/the opponent just wasted two dodges/popped condi remove and is thus now more vulnerable to Drakes Breath/popped a defensive CD.

You can always try to cancel the stomp near the end of the animation and re-stomp like you do with mesmers so the stomp animation lasts longer than vapor form’s duration and use a teleport to close the distance or and with team mate you could immobilize instead. Pretty much like thieves really but with an extra step.

In terms of revivability it’s not like it’s not like eles can be rezzed in Vapor Form like other classes can be rezzed while they use their stomp cancel/immediately after they teleport.

It also used to do more base damage but then they gave it a 20% nerf’ cause people ate them too much in beta.

What if they gave eles an exclusive weapon slot for-conjured-weapons-only-slot that a conjured weapon will occupy once summoned, and disappear after time expiry/charges used as usual? The 10-second weapon swap cooldown will maybe only occur when switching away from the conjured weapon i.e. can’t switch back to the conjured weapon immediately but you can always access your main skills.
(Being able to switch back to the conjured weapon after 10 seconds may be too powerful though, maybe 20 sec CD instead?)

The secondary conjured weapon can stay a bundle for allies but will occupy this weapon slot when picked up by an ele? Not sure about what to do about the second conjured item here….

What if it dealt 50% more damage to downed foes?

As a situational skill I think it deserves to be more powerful when the situation arises.

Nope, primary reason was they didn’t want to make players have to memorise 40 weapon skills. But you have to be glad for that, with their way of balancing ele skills they only 1/8 of them would be useful at 3x the cooldown they should be at rather than the 1/2 and 1.5x we have today.

yayuuu.9420:

If you are talking about world bosses then condition damage is as usefull against them as critical damage. Both are really irrational.

Now now, don’t go hating on crit damage… someone has to clear the Champion Hulks and Larva that spawns too you know~

#DeadmobsdealnoDPS

Of course there’s the 10/x/x/x/0 possibilities like 10/10/25/25/0 but you’re either in a PuG or organized so there’s no need for those.

Depends on whether you’re willing to invest the time into it. Eles CAN be very strong if you understand yourself and every other class but until then expect many deaths.

Bear in mind crit damage is less potent than straight +damage% traits since crit damage is more additive rather than multiplicative.

Vital Striking is easily kept up with Obsidian Flesh since by the time it ends, the trash mobs would be blinded from the LH 3rd hit assuming you LoSed correctly. Against bosses you just do 2 Fiery Rushes and they’d explode unless it’s fractals where higher level fractals bosses gets you down in one hit anyway.

Noonan.7659:

As with all damaging conditions, the damage ticks are determined by whatever stack does the -most- damage and has time left. Burning damage doesn’t get immediately overwritten.

Except there’s a queue system where older applications are knocked off when it goes over the stack limit which makes it easy to sabotage the DPS of the stack and the sabotage stacks difficult to get rid off once they are applied.

One D/X ele can maintain burning permanently with drakes breath and reapply easily it removed. The duration stacks 9 times but it’s still just one stack and the magnitude of the burning is I believe counted by the last application. I.e. Ten eles focusing on burning is as good as only one, but if only one ele focuses on burning his contribution will be nullified if the non-condi spec eles burn over his burn.