Elementalist Discussion

[Lucky_]

Double daggers normal rotation should be lightning 4 > 5, earth 3 > 2 > 4 > 5 > fire 4 > 5 > 3 > 2. Lightning enables you to close in fast and toss them in a reasonable semicircle, then you death grip into the middle, AoE KD into bleed bomb with earth, AoE ignite with fire, blow up with high damage on those burning and finish off with more burning.

Just don't try it above lvl50 in story instances or dungeons, you'll be raped unless instance has a lot of NPCs to offtank for you. Works fine in open world stuff though, provided you keep them upgraded.


Has anyone actually managed to get sceptre/focus to work outside PvP bursting?

[obdigore]

Is it just me who feels that Staff is the best for pve content and daggers are just mehtastic for anything above level 20 or so? With a staff the enemies never get in melee range, and the ranged ones fall to my fire before they do any real damage to me.

Problem is I don't feel like I have any strong direct attacks in WvW.

[Lucky_]

Is it just me who feels that Staff is the best for pve content and daggers are just mehtastic for anything above level 20 or so? With a staff the enemies never get in melee range, and the ranged ones fall to my fire before they do any real damage to me.

Problem is I don't feel like I have any strong direct attacks in WvW.

The problem with daggers is that you:

1. Need to keep them up to date as your damage equals your survival. If you don't melt enemy with your combo, you get melted yourself. This is trouble at early levels with weapons often lagging 10 levels or more behind and stats being crap. It gets better later on with power-precision and precision-critical damage % stats on gear and daggers as well as stats from traits.
2. You NEED defensive skills in utility slots, making them problematic early.
3. You can't survive higher level zones (than yourself) worth anything, because same problem as 1. applies - you don't kill fast enough.
4. Lack of ranged kiting options if things go south, which they tend to do a lot in later personal story quests in when having to do group events solo.

Essentially they're quick, deadly and very suicidal. Staff on the other hand is fairly slow, but you can solo multiple heavy enemies of higher level with a crappy staff just with kiting, and when group event occurs you're worth a lot to other players with combo fields, healing and AoE snares, while dagger elementalist is a very selfish spec. And of course, staff gets a huge burst after 30 with double elemental.

[obdigore]

... what is double elemental? You mean Minor/Major somehow helps the staff?

And yes, I'm over 50 now and was thinking about switching to daggers and I just get roflstomped by everything and their mother, which I do not recall happening in my teens.

[Lucky_]

... what is double elemental? You mean Minor/Major somehow helps the staff?

And yes, I'm over 50 now and was thinking about switching to daggers and I just get roflstomped by everything and their mother, which I do not recall happening in my teens.

Utility elemental and Elite elemental together. In groups, you can have utility frost (slow) or earth (tanky) coupled with water (heals nearby allies) or earth (very tanky, can stand against bosses for quite a while with heals incoming).

In solo PvE, double elemental can be anything from fire/fire (insane burst damage) to double earth (they tend to tank almost everything when accidentally pulling a big group, meaning nice enemy ball for a meteor shower and enemy-free casting time for it) to earth/water (earth tanks, elite water keeps it up for long term tanking).

[Starry101]

It sounds negative because it is negative. Elementalist is currently not viable outside its staff support role, neither for tourney or single play with a couple of really niche applications that don't really work outside the very small niche.

Completely agree with this statement. I am a main PvPer and I rolled and ele, but had to change. There was just no viable role in tournament 5v5 spvp. I tried playing it as support, but its almost useless in tourneys as every person on a 5 man team needs to hold their own. There are a lot more solo fights than large group fights where something like this would shine. While it did help it some fights, it was extremely situational. I'm currently rank 12 in PvP, mostly from tournament play and I have yet to see an elementalist that couldn't be shut down quickly, or if they can survive, they just don't have the damage to be "scary". There is just no place for them on a team right now, which is disappointing as it was my favourite class.

[DrakeWurrum]

Has anybody else noticed that the Magnetic Grab skill for Earth Daggers causes you to zoom PAST the target it hits, until you get to the max range of the spell?

Or am I just lagging that badly?

[Ryngo Blackratchet]

Has anybody else noticed that the Magnetic Grab skill for Earth Daggers causes you to zoom PAST the target it hits, until you get to the max range of the spell?

Or am I just lagging that badly?

Probably both. Was working fine until yesterday when the lag was crippling at times. I noticed it a few times as well, super annoying.

[Shamanic]

If anyone is using a support staff PvE dungeon (explorable modes) build I'd love to see what traits other people are running with if anyone has a link to their calculator

[Lucky_]

Has anybody else noticed that the Magnetic Grab skill for Earth Daggers causes you to zoom PAST the target it hits, until you get to the max range of the spell?

Or am I just lagging that badly?

This is caused by lag (and possible melee assist being on). Most of the time, it will function just like reflected death grip. Overshooting usually happens when I have fairly obvious lag in the zone and the mob is moving towards me as I grip to it.

[DrakeWurrum]

This is caused by lag (and possible melee assist being on). Most of the time, it will function just like reflected death grip. Overshooting usually happens when I have fairly obvious lag in the zone and the mob is moving towards me as I grip to it.

Hoping it was just the lag. Haven't played with my Elementalist since yesterday.

[Lucky_]

If anyone is using a support staff PvE dungeon (explorable modes) build I'd love to see what traits other people are running with if anyone has a link to their calculator

Pretty irrelevant atm due to level disparity. The only thing that is certain is that you're running a staff and at least 10 points in water for ability to remove conditions from yourself and nearby allies upon attuning to water. After 60 you'll probably want to have 30 water (remove conditions on applying regeneration) as well as 10 in arcane (apply AoE buffs upon attuning) for condition control. Your main role is that of support, mixing heals, condition removal and AoE slows which is especially important on pulls to get the initial phase of encounter under control, use water 4 or earth 4 with follow-up by air 5 as well as air 2 to soften initial damage. You may need to pop earth 3 on pulls when snaring if enemy has enough of "will one shot your cloth wearing ass" archer types as well, and I pretty much swear by having arcane shield and cleansing fire in 2 utilty slots in addition to dual elementals. Other classes do damage much better then elementalist does at the moment outside our particular niche (burst AoE) due to functionality of might mechanics.

---------- Post added 2012-09-02 at 01:09 AM ----------

Hoping it was just the lag. Haven't played with my Elementalist since yesterday.

You may wish to ensure that melee assist is off. It essentially makes your target impassable and hence overshoot it by pushing you "out of the middle of the targeted enemy" in situations where you would land inside enemy geometry otherwise.

[DrakeWurrum]

Hrm. Which is disappointing, because I actually prefer the melee assist. Sounds like that means some skills are a bit broken in that regard, then, and need to be adjusted.

[Morogoth]

I'm level 47 on my elementalist. My elite skills are Fiery greatsword, 7-serie Golem and Tornado. I see here that a lot of people use the Elemental, but is it stronger than the 7-serie?

Also, because I choose the 7-serie, I can't have the spectral wolf. Did I made an error?

Tornado seems to be useless in PvE since the damage is low and it knockback everything.

[Kittyvicious]

Hrm. Which is disappointing, because I actually prefer the melee assist. Sounds like that means some skills are a bit broken in that regard, then, and need to be adjusted.

I jumped on my lowbie Ele last night, had no lag and have melee assist turned off, and I experienced the same issue as you. I would zoom right past them...unlike the thief and necro skills which ranged hit, then teleport you to the mob which work perfectly.

I'm not sure what the difference in these mechanics are from a spell standpoint other than visuals and type of damage.

[Granyala]

6) Melee mobs are very easy, you just kite them to death. Range mobs are pain in the ass! If there is only one range mob you burn it down quickly while kiting melees. But if there is more than one ranged mobs you probably going to die..you simple can't burned them down both before they kill you..you can dodge 1-2 of their attacks but after that...if you are lucky and there are objects nearby and can play with line of sight maybe you will make it

Elementalist are glass cannons and usually in MMOs glass cannon classes have high dps to balance their weakness, but in GW2 that isn't happening.

Pretty much my experience as well.

[Moomurr]

Looks like there was a nice tweak to the underwater skills. I was getting a level per kill with my Trident. I could not really be arsed doing all my attunements before.

[rhandric]

Looks like there was a nice tweak to the underwater skills. I was getting a level per kill with my Trident. I could not really be arsed doing all my attunements before.

In one of the latest pre-release patches that we have patch notes for, they made it so that weapon skill unlocks scale with level. So if you're low level it might be 3, 5, 10, 15 or w/e, but after a certain threshold kills/unlock decrease to 1. I think while I was leveling my trident, one attunement was 1-1-1-3, but after that I leveled and the rest were 1-1-1-1.

[Rivelle]

Without trying to dig through 26 pages, I'm not sure the info on the first page is what I'm looking for and I'm curious if anyone can point me in the right direction here.

My elementalist main is up to level 41 so far and I'm enjoying it however I'm quite sure I'm not playing it correctly. Since about level 20 I've been leveling exclusively with my husband's engineer which is about 2-3 levels lower than me. We have not pvp'd at all yet and have basically just quested and done events. I find I prefer to only use a staff and pretty much never leave fire attunement. I can't seem to even think about rotating through attunements with every mob. Mobs die so fast it seems like it'd be a waste and we often end up aoe pulling them just to finish our quests faster...I have survival skills in my utility slots so I don't die very often.

I'm concerned about how I'm failing at the playstyle and some of the comments I've seen on elementalist pvp already being bad, and worry that when I do try it I'll be even worse off because I can't seem to grasp the attunement swapping. I was glad to see it's considered a "support" role as I like to play those sorts of roles in pve...when I played Rift I was a hybrid cleric who healed through dps'ing and when I played Aion I was a chanter, but I've never been very good at pvp'ing on them in those specs.

I have an asura mesmer I've leveled to 20 and I'm wondering if I should forget the elementalist for pvp and just level the mesmer for that instead. I could use some help or opinions. Thanks.

[Shamanic]

If mobs are dying so quickly you don't switch out of fire then there's not really a lot you can do, but in dungeons and pvp you're certainly going to find that both trash and bosses do not die quickly (I spent 22 mins on one explorable boss fight!) and you're definitely going to need a lot of the tools that are on the other elements. So I'd try and practice switching whilst you can to be honest, otherwise you may find it a lot trickier later on.

For example, you want to be able to throw out your heals, so you need to switch to water, and know that 3 and 5 are heal, then maybe you're being focused so you switch to air, pop swiftness, throw down a 5 then switch to fire and a 4 and you're away. People taking a lot of damage or the boss is using a special move switch to earth, get your protection up and pop your shield then cycle back through water for a regen and into fire for damage, your interrupt is in air and so on and so forth.... personally I'm heavily built on condition removal, control and support, I cycle through every single element on cooldown as much as I can because I have the talent which applies a boon when you do so, so even more reason to do it. Those numbers are what I do for staff btw but pretty sure all the weapons require pretty efficient switching at the higher content.