DOSGAMES

Greetings to nerds and n00bs alike!

I love healing, I've always gravitated towards it in MMOs.  I decided to main an Elementalist because it was quite clear that they would excel in a healing and support role.

After 3 months of testing and dungeon running with my guild, I think I've settled on the best build and gear itemization.  In the passages below, I'll be outlining my build, itemization, and a guide to its use.

Build: http://tinyurl.com/cmtqxlf

Itemization:

Traits:

Attributes: (Unbuffed)



Now that I've outlined the numbers, it's time to interpret them.

My goal was to make a very Tough healer with decent Power that never goes into a downed-state. I think it's incredibly important to stay on your feet at all times.  Pulling Allies from a fight so they can resurrect you is a distraction and lowers the groups damage. Often, one person goes down and things spin out of control, resulting in a wipe. This build is intended to keep you and your allies alive and condition free while providing decent sustained damage. I selected skills, traits, and gear with this in mind.

My gear itemization focuses on Power, Toughness, and Healing power; with a slight sprinkling of Vitality.
I completely avoid Precision, Condition Damage, and Critical Damage. For Utility Skills, I bring Conjure Frost Bow, Arcane Shield, and Mist Form.

Frost Bow provides additional Healing Power. It also has an AOE through Ice Storm. Healing through Water Arrow and most importantly an awesome CC with Deep Freeze. Frost Bow is nice because if I've blown through all my attunements and don't have much to spam. I can Conjure a Frost Bow and remain active in the fight.

Arcane Shield and Mist Form are, very simply, 'Oh Shit' buttons. They are to keep me alive during fights or when trying to run past or skip mobs.

Elite skill is obviously Glyph of Elementals.

(Alternative skills can also be Glyph of Lesser Elemental, Signet of Earth, or Signet of Air.)

Also, I think the Sylvari makes the best Water Elementalist because they have a Racial Skill that aids in Group Healing. Healing Seed is a self heal for 7,843 and also provides regeneration to allies near it (1,182 HP over 4 seconds)

My trait selections were pretty obvious. I chose my Fire traits to increase damage. My water traits reduce cooldowns and remove conditions and my Arcana grant boons and increase the radius of my AOE attacks and heals.  Also, I avoided traiting into Air or Earth because I didn't want to waste Trait points in acquiring Critical Chance, Critical Damage, or Condition Damage.

Now that I've got the basics out of the way; I'd like to talk about gear itemization in greater detail. It took a lot of time and wasted gold/dungeon tokens before I felt like I got it right.

Guild Wars 2 has limited combinations of Attributes offered on gear. When you combine this with the Trait Trees offering Attributes as well, it can feel like you are being pulled in multiple directions.  This is especially true if you are trying to stack Healing Power. Most of the healing dungeon sets offered (Healing, Precision, Vitality) or (Healing, Vitality, Condition Damage).

To me, these seemed less than ideal. Precision is only valuable if you have a decent amount of Power and Critical Damage. It's true that with high Precision it's possible to proc conditions  (whether it be from a Sigil or Traits) but I'd only get use out of that if I had a decent Condition Damage. If I tried to mix Condition Damage, Precision, AND Healing, I'd be too spread out and too fragile.

Also, I didn't want to invest into Condition Damage because I was set on using the Staff. The staff is by far the best Support Weapon but, it has a very limited ability to spread conditions. (Earth 2 'Eruption' being the only exception). I should also point out that "A little" Condition Damage is pointless, if you want it to be effective, the coefficients on it require you to stack a punch of it.

Also, In dungeons and Fractals, being able to stay on your feet is critical. I knew I needed a good amount of Toughness or Vitality (Or a combination of both).  As a healer who has several regeneration skills, I knew toughness would be better of the two.

The Cleric Set seemed like the obvious choice.  It's worked out great but, I felt like a full Cleric Set with Cleric Gems left me with too little HP.  I knew I needed more Vitality, I could either do this by ditching my Runes of the Monk for Runes that offer more Vitality or find another solution.

I came to the strange conclusion that Crests of the Solider were actually my best option over other Gems. Even though they have less stats, they are the only Upgrade Component that offers both Power, Toughness, and Vitality. I'm still playing around with different Gem/Rune combinations and would appreciate any suggestions!

That being said this build has been working out great in Fractals and Dungeons and I encourage you to check it out!

The title says it all. I can't seem to figure it out. It doesn't seem to work in my preview post.  I've looked it up for other forums. I'll test it here.

[ spoiler]Test[ /spoiler]

[Please post questions about the site in Site and Forum support - Arduin]

Wall-o-text INC.

Greetings to nerds and noobs alike!

When looking at the conversations going around about Guild Wars 2 and it's longevity, many people state PvP is (or should be) the true endgame. I agree whole-heartily!  Even though the original Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are very different games, Anet has clearly shown that they want dynamic and competitive PvP in the Guild Wars universe.

Until probably a month ago, I was crazy excited about GW2 becoming an Esport or at least a game with a great competitive scene. Unfortunately, I'm still left waiting...

I joined a Guild of some of the old school HoH and GvG elites, we were biting at the chops to pwn n00bs. That excitement lasted about two weeks. Somberly, we've all moved onto PvE in the hopes that something will change.

To be fair, the game is still young. Paid tournaments and private servers show PvP is going in the right direction. But, I don't think this is enough to make GW2 live up to the expectations of those who loved the PvP in the Original Guild War and certainly not good enough to recruit new players from other competitive scenes.

Unfortunately, Spectator mode, ranking systems, and monthly/yearly tournaments won't be enough either.  I'm sure you have noticed Heart of the Mists has become a ghost town (Halloween theme aside).  I mostly pass through there to save some silver on traveling costs.

sPvP and tPvP are not cutting it.

A game type where capturing/hold points is just not interesting enough. Anet tries to spice this up by adding a unique mechanic into each map and it still seems bland.  There isn't enough tactical decisions to make that persist throughout the game. Yeah, you can say "Hey you two go Keep." But, the repercussions of that choice are fleeting and often unimportant. Capturing Points and killing enemy players ends up just being a head-count, were you try to locate enemies and find group fights or 1v1s are are to your advantage.

Games are often decided based on the first few deaths. If 3 of your 5 team members die in the first encounter, from there, a good team will just beat you in the 'head count'. Killing you individually and out numbering you, all while those Capture points count up the score.

Now, things like tactics, scouting, and player position aren't bad, they are only bad when that's all there is.

sPvP and tPvP is still fun. I prefer the Quick-Joins because it reminds me of GW: Alliance Battles. It was a place were you could test out builds and casually dick around with friends. But, it's not enough to keep me interested for very long.  Competitive teams need more to chew on.

Guild Wars 2 needs GvG!

There have been a couple threads talking about Reaper's Rumble and how GW2 could use a MOBA game type.  Though I think it's interesting, I don't think it plays to GW2's strengths. But, that's a conversation for another time.

I will say that MOBAs have a key element that many competitive PvPers want and that is: Resource Management.  Elements of WvW could be easily implemented to add resource management. This give teams the ability to make interesting decisions that effect the course of the game.

I really don't think GvG would be that difficult to develop. You really just need to combine elements of sPvP and WvW and apply them to a 8vs8 map.  Important elements would be things like: NPCs, Gates, Siege Equipment, Supply, Capture points, Mini-bosses, portals, and of course a Guild Lord.

The goal of the game would be to kill the enemy's Guild Lord while protecting your own. You would accumulate supply automatically from 4 NPC workers on your Farm. You can also gain supply from killing the mini-bosses, or by holding the center supply point.  From there, you could use this supply to activate a 2-way team portal, improve your keep's defenses, upgrade your NPC guards or grant buffs to team members.

Here is something that I did-up in paint to display my ideas. Bellow, I'll also describe some of the finer details of how supply is gained and how it would be used.




Resources:

- Farm has 4 NPC (killable & rez-able) workers. Each worker with provide 5 supply every 30 seconds (20 supply in total)

- Holding the Center supply camp increase supply generation by 50%

- Killing the Mini-Boss would grant 100 supply. (Bosses respawn every 4-5 minutes)

Possible Upgrades:

- Activate 2-way portal for 5 minutes-
- Reinforce Doors
- Munitions for defense equipment (cannonballs, etc)
- Militia: Increase Health and Damage of Workers
- Overtime: Add two workers for 3 minutes
- Improved Guard: Increase Armor and Health for Guards
- Damage Buff for Allies
- Health Buff for Allies
- Armor Buff for Allies
- Speed Buff for Allies

I'm sure I'm missing some obvious ones, but you get the picture.

Let me know what you think!

-DOSGAMES

In Guild Wars 2, Necromancer sound effects seem so strange and yet familiar.

It took me a while to place it but, I finally figured out what the remind me of: beat samples from cheesy pop songs in the 80's.

It's uncanny, Especially the main hand dagger skills.

Compare these side by side.





You'll never unhear it!

Greetings to nerds and n00bs alike!

Since release, many Elementalist players have "lost the faith". This is mostly due to the many weapon and trait nerfs to the Elementalist pre-release.

I've had my fair share of doubts as well but, due to the variation in builds, player skill, and team compositions  it's been incredibly hard to verify anything beyond anecdotal evidence.

Now, I know rolling 5 Elementalists might not be the best way of testing the viability of the the profession but, I think it'll be a great way of testing what roles an Elementalist can fill compared to other professions - plus it'll be fun!

I plan on streaming the entire experiment http://www.twitch.tv/dosgames but I need help from fellow Gw2guru Elementalists!

I'd like to start the experiment this Sunday 09/09/2012 @ 3PM CST.

My GW2 account is Flagship.4267. Please message me here or in game if you'd like to contribute. I'd only ask that you're reasonably experienced, have Ventrillo + Mic, and a positive and friendly mindset. (Keep in mind you will be on stream.)

As far as builds and team comps, I'm open to suggestions!

We should try to have 1-2 roamers, 1-2 bunkers, 1-2 balanced or "tanky dps" and 1 Staff Support.

I hope I can get enough people to make this experiment fun and enlightening!

Suggested Builds:

Roamer: Ac Powerr's S/D Glass Cannon
http://tinyurl.com/c6nv647

Bunker: S/F Bunker Build (Need Suggestions)

Tanky DPS: My SSS D/D build: http://tinyurl.com/bw9o5mz

Staff Support: (Need suggestions)