Curse

Late_Night_Limbo · Jan 30, 2009, 10:18 PM // 22:18

Elementalist Primer – By: Tokyo

Ok, so everyone is probably wondering, “why write a primer about a profession that even a chimp could play?” Well, there are 2 main reasons for this. First, it’s not as simple as everyone thinks, and second, an ele is more than just button mashing on recharge. Eles have the ability to lose entire matches for your team by 1 or 2 small slip ups, it is your goal to not be noticed by your team. If your team doesn’t notice your play, then your not getting your team into trouble. Don’t expect to get any praise for playing an ele. This guide is meant to address all the aspects of playing an ele from an HA perspective, but a lot of this information is directly applicable for GvG as well. So plz don’t make yourself look like an ignorant retard and say “Toomz Scrub” after this post like I know all you gvg ppl like to do.

Ok, before I get into the article, since most people won’t recognize my IGN on account of having many accts and IGN’s, so here are my credentials… I have played since Beta with a combined fame count of around 30k across 5 accounts, nearing my champ 2 without having farmed the points (yeah I know its not much champ pts, but I stopped playing when matches started going over 30 mins back in VoD times), and various other pvp titles which about 90% of all my pvp experience is on an ele. So if anyone with more experience has input, feel free to add it / correct me if I am wrong. (or if anyone is interested in my IGN for purposes of PM’s or w/e, I play currently under “Tokyo Underground”)

So to start with, I will break down the profession into sections… Bars, Equipment, Positioning on maps, Support, and Special Cases.

Late_Night_Limbo · Jan 30, 2009, 10:18 PM // 22:18

BARS: for the bars, I will use typical meta bars so people can directly relate to the advice.
Fire bars: SH being the most typical bar for any ele to play, this one requires the least experience. A typical SH bar would be one that includes SH, 2 heats, glyph of lesser, rodgorts, a support skill, attunement, and a res.

To start with…. If your playing an SH bar, you might be inclined to just dump SH at will on clump ups like everyone will tell you… well, they are partially wrong. Yes, it is good to dump on clumps, but you have to do it at the right time with the right heat to maximize effectiveness. Typically what you want to do is have up your glyph and find a clump up of 3 or more people and drop your NON-elite heats on them. Reason for this: You will probably get interrupted on at least one of them, preventing a long and pointless recharge on your elite. Since the meta game has so many interrupts, you want to clear out any of these before using your elite.

Next, get ready to use SH, but don’t look for a ball up on this one… instead, if you have any semblance of KD’s on your frontline, such as a PS sin or a hammer warrior, watch them closely. If you see a PS sin use his elite, start casting on his target, or if a hammer warrior begins a KD chain, drop it on his target. Doing so will often result in kills, and even if they don’t die, you just effectively wiped the enemy monks energy trying to heal and prot the target. Prots will typically over prot the target because they will shout out on vent that they are kd’d in AoE.

Now for rodgorts… I must stress this one point… ALWAYS have glyph up before you use this skill… a few times w/o using it and you will find yourself bouncing on low energy for the rest of the match. Typically the best time to use this is on spikes, but if your on a pure pressure build, try to coordinate w/ any other ranged damage classes on your team… typically this will draw out a spirit bond from the enemy monks, which frees up your frontline to cause a lot of havoc for a few seconds and then burn their healers energy.

Attunement: ok, pretty simple, keep it up at all times. However, this can prove to be more challenging that you think w/ all the rends and monks running stances now so all they have to rend is your channeling. Ideally, if your attunement is rended, use glyph for anything over 5 energy, and when it recharges, step back out of the fight (away from interrupts) recast, then use your higher 15 energy skills quickly before it gets rended again.

Support skills: these most typically will be Song of Concentration, Make Haste, or Weapon of Warding.

I will start with the first. Song is a very critical skill, since PD mesmers went the way of the dinosaur because norgu is just so damn sexy that ppl cant resist running w/ him on their team. To use it properly, make sure you have the right equip for this (more on that in the equipment section). When you first run into battle, start spearing shit… immediately… Altar caps are typically won or lost in the first 15 seconds, so if you don’t have song up quickly you effectively cost your entire team the match. Best thing to do like I said is spear the closest thing to you, but as soon as something like a spirit or a ghostly hero get into range, start spearing those… you don’t miss because of target movement.

Make haste is probably the easiest of all these to run. On normal maps however, eles tend to forget the fact that they have this skill. If you see someone take a lot of damage really fast or they are being chased by a frontline, haste them. Don’t just cast it on your monks on recharge, that’s just being lazy. On courtyard, haste whoever has the ghost at 8 seconds before the gate opens and then the ghostly on recharge until he gets to the top. There are some exceptions if whoever has the ghost has their own speed buff. Then, on Hall of Heroes, haste your snare if its not a relic run… they will be critical to slowing down other team and giving you an early advantage.

Weapon of Warding is one of the trickier support skills to run. Most monks will demand that you keep it perma on them. Don’t listen to them, they are just greedy and way over rating their abilities as monks to keep your party alive. This skill is your most effective weapon against spikes and kd trains. Try to watch their frontline and the way they select targets. After about 1:00 into a game you can typically figure out their pattern so you can pre-ward targets and waste their time and skills. On altar maps, it is your first and foremost priority to keep warding on your ghostly hero… do not let it drop or lapse, and if it gets interrupted, be VERY vocal about that fact, and include what interrupt took it out, it is very helpful information for your monks.

Ressurection skills are a very important part of your bar… especially Death pact and flesh of my flesh. If a monk dies, use pact IMMEDIATELY… I typically start clicking it when the monk is at 10% hp and keep clicking it until they either drop and need to be ressed, or they pop up over 20%. If you have flesh, use that before using signets on anything that isn’t a monk… if you can get flesh off early, it saves res sigs for when they really count. Also, when you start to use either flesh or death pact, shout out to your monks to HP boost you while your ressing. This prevents the scenario where people come up with 10% health and immediately die again costing your team 2 unnecessary deaths and no other means to res. If you pact someone, immediately cue up a weapon of warding for them and keep it on them at least 30 seconds. The enemy will see you pact someone and typically will let it go through without interrupting it thinking they can kill 2 birds with one stone. But, if your pacted teammate has warding on them the other team will eventually move on, which usually takes about 30 seconds for arrogant or inexperienced teams. Finally, res sigs… the staple res… this advice goes for everyone, not just eles… if someone dies, count 2 seconds then start ressing. This gives a buffer for your pact/flesh to start ressing first and if they get interrupted, you are right there with the res. Its unacceptable to have someone down for more than 6 seconds.

Earth Bar: your job is typically to backline their frontline, this means dropping UG and eruptions on warriors/assassins/dervishes on recharge… the less they hit, the less pressure your team takes. The single most important thing to this is vocalization. Tell your team when you’re dropping AoE so that monks know to stop and stand in it to get melee off their backs. Another key think is to drop eruption on rangers that are causing your team a lot of grief w/ their interrupts… it can give your team some breathing room for important skills.

Ward v Foes / Grasping earth are not just for relic runs ppl, they can help immensely in regular matches… just brush by their frontline and whack them w/ a grasping to relive pressure, or drop a foes in the middle of all the action to help monks kite and frontline to catch their targets.

Bsurge: this skill alone warrants an entire thread, but here’s the skill in a nutshell. In HA if you use this, it’s typically spammable, but try to time it with their frontline. If you see a warrior run in at a monk after whacking on a midline for a bit, blind him as he’s coming in so he won’t KD your monk. It’s pretty simple if you just slow down and think about where you’re putting blinds. Another example would be if they had a ranger interrupting your team… announce when you’re blinding so that your team has a small window to get off free casts.

Late_Night_Limbo · Jan 30, 2009, 10:19 PM // 22:19

EQUIPMENT:
This is pretty easy to understand, use survivor/vitae w/ a superior vigor and minor energy storage. You should have 40/40 sets for any AoE, snares, support skills. You should also have shield/spear sets including shields to all type of ele dmg and piercing dmg. Your spear should be furious w/ energy+5 inscrip and a +30hp mod. You should also carry a 40/20/20 staff for whatever your enchanment is under. For the headpiece, this is up to you and how good you are with kiting and how good your monks are. If you have good monks and you can kite, put on a superior rune. Most teams however, prefer a major on your head.

Late_Night_Limbo · Jan 30, 2009, 10:20 PM // 22:20

POSITIONING ON MAPS:
I’ll break this one down map by map from the perspective of a fire ele (earth eles tend to have a more defensive role on maps on account of their snares and ability to backline the enemy frontline). Just remember that the rule of thumb is to stay mobile, keep moving, don’t stop, and watch the field.

Underworld:
This should be the ideal case for all teams, but GO THE LONG WAY, avoid the choke point like the plague, and push all the way in. Once you are in, immediately look for cover. The best place typically is on the backside of the stair case. The reason for this is the ghostly… he has pro dshots.. don’t ignore that fact. Another ting you want to do, is stay in front of the monks visual field… doing so allows them to see incoming spikes on you. But basically, stay on the fringes of the fight… this does several things… it keeps you out of enemy AoE, and if they do cast AoE on you, you can move easily and it keeps them wasting AoE because you are not close to anyone else on your team. Also, from that position, you can relay information to your team about the enemy frontline movement, what important skills they have, and how your teams needs to shift their damage focus. Eles are the best general strategy callers while in the middle of fighting.

Fetid River:
The only advice I have for this is keep high ground, but stay out of the center. Stick to the sides and stay in front of your monks. When 1:30 rolls around, save up some AoEs and if your team is holding up fine, move up quickly and dump your heats on their priest and then rush back. Before you do this though, announce it to your team so they know full and well where your going. This typically causes the other team to collapse in one big team failure. Their monks most likely will try to drop back to save the priest and end up over extending their team, or their frontline will drop back for you which gives a lull in the fighting for your monks to recuperate energy and effectively force their own midline into a frontline position. Typically pushing teams like that throw their entire team position out of whack and allows your team to push hard on them. But only use this tactic if you know no ones watching you specifically (like a mesmer camping you, cuz they will notify their team when you go for the priest).

Burial Mounds:
This is your second priest map. Similar to fetid river, but there are a lot more choke points. This can work to your advantage if you are in the right place casting at the right time on the right enemies. You want to catch enemies between the rocks on the center of the map, this will either force them closer to your team over extending them, or into retreat, which means your team gains real estate. Pretty much use the same tactics as Fetid for priest kills, but make sure you aren’t followed. Also, stand behind walls to cast on the priest or their ghost will interrupt you.

Unholy Temples:
Relic Run map advice is for the typical running scenario, this might vary if you are running a spike. If you have haste, advise the runner when he has a safe clear to go for the relic… remember, you are their eyes and ears on that one, so be attentive. Haste them going in for the relic, not after they already picked it up, and keep hasting them until they are past your own relic spawn. From there, if they cant get it in, there’s something wrong with them or your monk doesn’t know how to use stability. Once you stopped hasting that runner, get in position to haste the next runner back at the enemy relic spawn. When you are going in for hastes, its also a good idea to drop some heats on their ghostly, it forces their monks to split up and can usually score your team some free kills on their snare or frontline.

If you have snares on your bar, keep ward v foes up around your relic span on 40/40. when their runner starts to run down the steps, be starting to cast grasping earth and be ready to call back teammates to assist in body blocking. Make sure you tell your team you have a runner blocked and always ask for assistance… Its hard enough to keep someone blocked, and doing it alone is even worse. If they have massive AoE, ask the prot monk for a shield absorption and try to tank it, but make sure the rest of your team back out of the AoE… no sense in everyone dying for a silly reason. Also, if the other team is running heroes with interrupts and they are locked on you, recast your attunement and maybe an AoE or 2 before their runner makes a break for the relic, it draws out the interrupts making it much easier to land the grasping. Also, recast skills before you reuse ward v foes to draw out the interrupts again.

Forgotten Shrines:
This map is entirely up to your strategy caller, just make sure you keep an eye out for the other teams movements and communicate their movements clear and quickly, don’t chatter up vent with useless babble. If you’re a snare, typically you will be hasted when the gate opens, so this means you haul ass towards their ghost and keep him snared/blocked. If you manage to pin him against a wall or a corner, call down a fire ele or a big damage player to help finish off the ghost, and make your you kill him after time so he wont res again for another minute or so.

Golden Gates:
Same tactics as underworld, stay out of the middle, keep in monks view, and try to cancel cast cheap skills if they have interrupts. One note though, don’t drop any AoE on their priest if both teams priest swap… it’s a chance for frontline to build adrenaline before the match. Instead, ask for a speed boost and go hold open the gate leaver for your team.. If the other team wants to be cute and rush your team, be vocal and direct 1 frontline to cut through and kill the priest solo… doing this will take pressure off your team and force a retreat on their part. Retreating for them means certain death. This is because it backs them into a bottle neck while still allowing your team to maintain clear movement. This would be the point where you drop a shit storm on them and punish them for being cocky.

Courtyard: If you have haste.. hate the person whom the ghost is following at 8 seconds till the start, then haste the ghost on recharge till eh reaches the alter, from there, if you have SoC, start building the second you get into range, and keep it built even if you have the altar capped, you never know when you might need it. If you have weapon of warding, keep it on the ghost 24/7 but be wary of interrupts… try to cast as much as you can when warding is recharging to draw out interrupts. It is also the eles job to be on the look out for enemies dropping back to pick up ghosts that res back at base and then your job to shut the gate on them over and over. If you can, right before each 2:00 interval, run into as much dmg as you can and die so you are base ressed on the altar with full energy (caution: only do this if you have the altar and warding is up on the ghost already, and for the love of god, tell your monks so they don’t heal you and end up getting you timered.) In some cases you can sac yourself to draw out a base res, if your ghost is dead… that way no one has to run back to get him, you just res next to him. (again, advise monks of what you are doing before you do something like that).

In the event your ghost dies and you feel that you still have a chance of winning, the rule of thumb is… if you have the time, take it. This means take the ghost the long way around. Too many teams get lever tricked and waste valuable minutes trying to get their ghost back to center. The only time you rush through the gate is if your running out of time or the other teams are very bad (this is usually figured out in the first minute of the game).

Antechamber: much like sacred shrines, listen to your tactics caller and be very vocal about enemy movement and splits. If you haven’t figures it out yet, eles have a lot of down time between skills and have the best ability to act as watch guards. Everyone else on your team will probably be so focused on what they are doing that they might miss enemy movements.

Hall of Heroes Relics: If you have haste, stay as far down the stairs as you can while still being in range of the relic and haste runners once they pick up the relic, not before. As the runners move down, follow with them because they will need a new haste if they get snared. While down there, dump AoE on any target that has moved onto your stairs, then back up for the next runner to be hasted. If you have snares, listen to the tactic caller, there’s too many different situations to discuss them all.

Hall of Heroes Cap Points: Typically, eles are used to split back for home base if someone tries to ninja it. You will be the main eyes and ears for your tactics caller. Be very vocal about what teams are sending ppl to which bases, and how many they are sending. If you have haste and you hear someone say they are splitting for a base, haste them if they are in range, it helps them get their faster, and more often than not, undetected.

Hall of Heroes King of the Hill: same as courtyard, except try to position yourself right in the enemy midline so the third team ends up hitting unintended targets. And make sure to call for guardian or stability or SoC if you have warding… getting that interrupted costs your team wins. If you have SoC, cast an AoE real quick and then cancel it before you try a SoC, quite frequently, it will draw out an interrupt. And when you cast it, be standing off the altar, but not in plain view of mesmers/rangers.. they watch for animations, and that one is the easiest one in game to spot..

Late_Night_Limbo · Jan 30, 2009, 10:20 PM // 22:20

SUPPORT:

This is the eles biggest part in team communication. Since you have a lot of free time between skills, you MUST be communicative about enemy movement/skill usage… this means call incoming diversions, watch for spike targets, and watch the enemies frontline movement.

Another aspect of support, which is really the most important part, if stay mobile. When I play ele, I typically have the W key held down for the duration of the match. You should be constantly moving if you’re not casting. This helps out monks tremendously, if they don’t have to heal you constantly because your tanking AoE, it saves their energy for more important things. To best describe it, don’t make yourself a target. If you stand still, you will get dumped on.

Late_Night_Limbo · Jan 30, 2009, 10:21 PM // 22:21

SPECIAL CASES:

In some cases, you will play very strange bars with very odd skills per the request of eth team leader… make sure you read all the skill descriptions, and ask when you need to be using these special skills. Don’t be afraid to ask. If it’s not a typical bar, it usually requires some form of explanation at least to figure out what your team is doing as well.

Another example of a special case would be things like having double wardings on your team, just work out who wards who and on which maps… you shouldn’t be figuring it out 30 seconds into a match.

At the moment I can’t think of a ton of special cases since ele bars are pretty standardized now.

I hope this primer helps for anyone looking to move into PvP more seriously or for anyone who needed a refresher course. Just remember, BE VOCAL (with important information), and remember that teams will typically never congratulate eles, just don’t be the guy who screwed up the match single handedly. [b]Be Brave, Be Strong, Be Pro and good luck.

Late_Night_Limbo · Jan 30, 2009, 10:24 PM // 22:24

APPENDIX by Feanor: A few salient points were brought up on another forum that need to be addressed in this post:

Feanor Writes:

you didnt mention about on 3 way maps if your team just got killed, but youre still alive, put aoe on the team with the most amount of points besides you, if their scores are still even, you can wait to see who is gaining the advantage and aoe them...the fire ele can still be effective even when his team is dead

when youre holding the altar putting your aoe on their frontline and kiting them through it is always a good idea

when using the 3 aoe spells on the SH bar, its important to know that aoe isnt only for massive damage on big clumps of people

example: if the other team has a character that you need shut down, you can put aoe on him to make him stop what hes doing and run away for a few seconds

a trick i like to use with this build is to form a triangle with the 3 aoe spells, trying to get as many of the other team in the middle of it as possible, so whenever they kite, theyre kiting through the fire no matter what, AOE is great for controlling the enemy teams movement like this,on top of all the damage it does.

**Marty Silverblade** · Jan 31, 2009, 01:19 AM // 01:19

tl;dr, but seriously, get some formatting. With only Capital letters to distinguish stuff (no bold for headings and stuff) it's hard/annoying to find stuff you want to know (it's also a wall of text, which discourages people to read it).

deluxe · Jan 31, 2009, 02:26 AM // 02:26

Huge walls of text make my eyes bleed mate!
Also, tutorial for Ele?

Next tutor: N/Rt.

Krill · Jan 31, 2009, 03:15 AM // 03:15

Well, I'll say something nice since you're in my alliance

Ele (and necro) should be pretty much straightforward but a lot of players still manage to muck it up.

Ward v Foes / Grasping earth are not just for relic runs ppl, they can help immensely in regular matches… just brush by their frontline and whack them w/ a grasping to relive pressure, or drop a foes in the middle of all the action to help monks kite and frontline to catch their targets.

bold / highlight / underline

Sun Fired Blank · Jan 31, 2009, 03:59 AM // 03:59

I'm not partial to use of Grasping defensively because:

1. if their frontline is even remotely decent, you get punched in the face when you do
2. their frontline is likely in proximity to another person on your team, so you directly make yourself vulnerable to _insert everything midline_
3. your team probably sucks at pre-kiting, so it doesn't help
4. peace and harmony means you can't make it stick anyways, which is also a great argument against Faintheartedness

On a necro, Ward v. Foes is too expensive to use defensively. It's far more important for you to facilitate degen spread, especially versus any team that uses peace and harmony.

Late_Night_Limbo · Jan 31, 2009, 11:10 PM // 23:10

Im currently in the process of formatting the post, sorry for the wall of text, it was more to get it down so I could then go back and edit it properly. It should be done some time before next weekend (real life permitting).

Reverend Dr · Feb 01, 2009, 02:50 PM // 14:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

It's far more important for you to facilitate degen spread, especially versus any team that uses peace and harmony.

Yes, when a team has strong hex removal, it is far more important for me to use hexes than my non-hex skills.

In an 8v8 slap fest ward against foes works better at mitigating damage than eruption and unsteady ground combined. But I shouldn't run that because I should run more hex fodder for P&H.

Grasping vs smite hex hero, not so good. Ward against foes, always good.

At first I thought the OP was just posting something that everyone already knows. But seriously, read the OP, you will learn a thing or two.

Gnat Attack · Feb 01, 2009, 04:37 PM // 16:37

Awesome job! To be honest, today's HA players need to look at this and keep it as a reference. As funny as it sounds, when we pug people. We have people saying

"Oh, ele is a mindless job and easy...i can run it."

Only to find he can't lay down an AoE with an Earthshaker, or use WoW on a prot with a hammer warrior on him. Read this regardless if you're r0 or r10

PS: Don't laugh at the guide. Chances are YOU need to read it more than anyone else.

Sun Fired Blank · Feb 01, 2009, 08:01 PM // 20:01

If you are LC, and you use Ward versus Foes, then you lose to Peace and Harmony. That energy has to go to your AoE degen hexes or you're not useful; you lose the fight. You want Peace and Harmony to sink as much energy as possible into removing your hexes and cleaning up your degen, and you get a lot more out of doing this than you do out of using Ward versus Foes for your players to kite through and around.

You see it as hex fodder, but the reality is that you can outpace the party healing / removal of Peace and Harmony on a Lingering Curse necro, and in addition to rending the HB, you want to force it to pick up some of the red bar cleaning that would otherwise handled by Divine Healing / Heaven's Delight, and you get much less bang for your buck if you use a Ward versus Foes than if you use your AoE degen hexes.

Reverend Dr · Feb 02, 2009, 02:04 AM // 02:04

Ward is 15 energy, lingering is 5 energy Why don't you have enough energy for both?

I have a wonderful powerful tool on my bar (ward against foes), why should I not use this to get the most advantage for my team?

Div · Feb 02, 2009, 09:52 AM // 09:52

Ele in HA is like the reverse of the flagger in GvG. A flagger can't do too much to win you matches, but they can certainly lose you a match from critical mistakes. An ele can't make too many huge mistakes to cause losses, but they can certainly score you kills and win games.

It's why people think of it as the easiest to play, because the range between a good and bad ele is a lot smaller compared to the range between a good and bad monk.

Late_Night_Limbo · Feb 05, 2009, 01:00 AM // 01:00

http://www.teamquitter.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11067

Theres the link to the formatted version, its much more legible.