Air Attunement
I was skeptical of the Air attunement at first but it ended up being the main attunement of the best beta PvP build I could come up with. I used Scepter/Dagger.
The movement speed passives you get by remaining in Air attunement are really useful for positioning and getting around the maps in PvP. Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave combined with Lightning Strike make for a nice burst of initial damage, and the blindness caused by Elemental Surge buy you some downtime while your next burst charges up. Ride the lightning compliments your movement speed, so you can position and going in in a very calculated way. For survivability and escapes you have Updraft which is kind of the GTFO move that knocks enemies away, and of course Mist Form for brief invulnerability.
This build involves essentially no twisting between attunements, which means it shouldn't be optimal for an Elementalist. Optimal for an Elementalist ought to entail utilizing multiple attunements to utilize the right tool at the right time... but I had the most success in PvP with this strict Air build.
The thing that makes me apprehensive about whether this attunement will be viable once the class is reworked is that most of the abilities using most of the weapons don't have much utility attached to them. With Fire you've got burning that gets applied... with Water you've got slows/heals (although mostly junk)... with Earth you have bleeds and some survivability (although not much) but with Air you've got nothing really. It's mostly straight damage with one blind/vulnerability debuff max at a time.
The staff gives you a nice balance of damage and control, between Chain Lightning and Lightning Surge you've got okay damage (while not as high as Fire staff, and no utility). Between Gust and Static Field you've got some decent control, while its not a root or a polymorph its more of a shove. Windborne Speed isn't really that impressive of an escape, but its nice to have something to remove impairments.
When using dagger main hand I can't quite buy into the philosophy behind abilities like Shocking Aura (when you're hit the enemy is stunned). As a squishy Elementalist I don't want to get hit. I don't want to be in a situation where I have to rely on taking 4-6k damage to inflict a 1 second stun. It's not cost effective. I'm also not on-board with the philosophy behind abilities like Lightning Whip, which is a melee range weapon. It's pretty simple math to figure out if you're in melee range swapping hits with someone smacking you for 3k and you're only hitting them for 300, you're going to die pretty fast.
So what does this attunement have to offer a twisting Elementalist build? Single target burst? The beta honestly confused me more than anything with these abilities, but I guess you can't exactly get a good grasp on these things in just a few days.
This build involves essentially no twisting between attunements, which means it shouldn't be optimal for an Elementalist. Optimal for an Elementalist ought to entail utilizing multiple attunements to utilize the right tool at the right time... but I had the most success in PvP with this strict Air build.
The thing that makes me apprehensive about whether this attunement will be viable once the class is reworked is that most of the abilities using most of the weapons don't have much utility attached to them. With Fire you've got burning that gets applied... with Water you've got slows/heals (although mostly junk)... with Earth you have bleeds and some survivability (although not much) but with Air you've got nothing really. It's mostly straight damage with one blind/vulnerability debuff max at a time.
The staff gives you a nice balance of damage and control, between Chain Lightning and Lightning Surge you've got okay damage (while not as high as Fire staff, and no utility). Between Gust and Static Field you've got some decent control, while its not a root or a polymorph its more of a shove. Windborne Speed isn't really that impressive of an escape, but its nice to have something to remove impairments.
When using dagger main hand I can't quite buy into the philosophy behind abilities like Shocking Aura (when you're hit the enemy is stunned). As a squishy Elementalist I don't want to get hit. I don't want to be in a situation where I have to rely on taking 4-6k damage to inflict a 1 second stun. It's not cost effective. I'm also not on-board with the philosophy behind abilities like Lightning Whip, which is a melee range weapon. It's pretty simple math to figure out if you're in melee range swapping hits with someone smacking you for 3k and you're only hitting them for 300, you're going to die pretty fast.
So what does this attunement have to offer a twisting Elementalist build? Single target burst? The beta honestly confused me more than anything with these abilities, but I guess you can't exactly get a good grasp on these things in just a few days.
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