Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I’ve been playing the D/F Auramancer meta build in PvP, and I was wondering why it’s D/F instead of D/D. D/D air has more high movement options in air attunement, which would seem to be better overall.

Thanks!

Focus has an invulnerability skill on Earth, a condition clear on Earth, projectile destruction on Air, and a nice CC (and blast finisher) on Water. Overall it’s just better for what the auramancer build is trying to do.

well offhand dagger sucks. that’s why.

Focus has more defense

After HoT everything was power creeped and sustain creeped – a lot classes has many ways to on demand avoid damage in direct way (block’s, evades) or indirectly avoid (stealth, better mobility). Ele has almost non these. Ele relies on stats and passive proc’s that work after you get hit. Focus is last defence line that keeps ele in pvp.

Unfortunately there is no amulet that has both toughness and healing power (everything scales on tempest only with healing power and we can’t avoid damage in such easy way like…for example war on berserk amulet). Healbot has quite boring yet critical role – it gives sustain to classes that thier role is to destroy bunkers but too much glassy when focused in large teamfights →necro/rev. Healbot tempest can’t easy disengage as druid or scrapper so he will die for sure under focus without ekem focus offhand.

Dagger offhand is not that bad…but kinda force ele to fight in smaller fights so ALOT of support is wasted. Besides what’s the point is staying in these fights if thief will +1 you in seconds and just cc you to death (because projectile denial is important when defending from pistol cc and we don’t have it on dagger offhand). Dagger would be so much better weapon used in offensive build but tempest has 0 value from offensive amulets and works only with traits from water and earth.

So it short – if you don’t be to be useless against competitive players using metabuilds…you use focus…for better and worse.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Focus has an invulnerability skill on Earth, a condition clear on Earth, projectile destruction on Air, and a nice CC (and blast finisher) on Water. Overall it’s just better for what the auramancer build is trying to do.

Yup, also don’t forget to use your blast finishers to stack swiftness for the your team at the beginning. 1. Overload lightning field. 2. Swap to earth and hit magnetic wave. 3. Swap to water and hit frozen burst.

Everyone should learn what their build can proc at the beginning of the match to help your team.

I’ve always played D/D ele….

I find Focus is for newer Eles, they heavily rely on the invuln. It will always come down to your own skill level though, dagger is harder to use more efficiently but the pay off is better.

If you can be effective with Dagger off hand, by all means keep getting better at it.

(you should try water/air/temp build with lightning rod traits and surging runes on D/D) – turn your team into a moving stun field for 16 seconds, striking multiple enemies with lightning rod and laying out CC with Air and Earth.

d/f gives you 2 on demand CC’s (comet + the air 5) as well as invuln/condi removal/short reflect on earth.

There’s also a lot of projectile destruction which is pretty good.

If you don’t like /f you can try warhorn too that’s sorta ok even though it’s not the best but dagger offhand is seriously lacking

sephiroth.4217:

I’ve always played D/D ele….

I find Focus is for newer Eles, they heavily rely on the invuln. It will always come down to your own skill level though, dagger is harder to use more efficiently but the pay off is better.

If you can be effective with Dagger off hand, by all means keep getting better at it.

(you should try water/air/temp build with lightning rod traits and surging runes on D/D) – turn your team into a moving stun field for 16 seconds, striking multiple enemies with lightning rod and laying out CC with Air and Earth.

Yeah shocking aura share is insanely fun but a lot of people expect the tempest to be supporting them. While I wouldn’t say offhand dagger is bad after the changes to it a thief can still teleport onto you and take off more than half your health with precast BS+steal and your only real follow up to it is shocking aura on DD but DF has that extra invuln and as others say reflect for getting a heal off to let you get to kiting spots.

Focus is just a lot better for supporting your team through AoE projectile destruction and staying alive which is your role a lot of the time.

apharma.3741:

sephiroth.4217:

I’ve always played D/D ele….

I find Focus is for newer Eles, they heavily rely on the invuln. It will always come down to your own skill level though, dagger is harder to use more efficiently but the pay off is better.

If you can be effective with Dagger off hand, by all means keep getting better at it.

(you should try water/air/temp build with lightning rod traits and surging runes on D/D) – turn your team into a moving stun field for 16 seconds, striking multiple enemies with lightning rod and laying out CC with Air and Earth.

Yeah shocking aura share is insanely fun but a lot of people expect the tempest to be supporting them. While I wouldn’t say offhand dagger is bad after the changes to it a thief can still teleport onto you and take off more than half your health with precast BS+steal and your only real follow up to it is shocking aura on DD but DF has that extra invuln and as others say reflect for getting a heal off to let you get to kiting spots.

Focus is just a lot better for supporting your team through AoE projectile destruction and staying alive which is your role a lot of the time.

Thieves are easy to deal with if you run D/D… well for me anyway. Like I said though, it just comes down to skill with the weapons. I used to run focus about 4 years ago but offhand dagger has always been more useful to me for both support, control, utility and damage reasons.

Thats just me though, I dont need all that extra projectile hate because I rely on Magnetic Auras for that. You can still support on D/D too…

Offhand dagger requires skill to be more effective than focus but focus is generally easier to use and requires next to little practice to be effective. It also has that handy “oh crap i dun goofed” invulnerability button. Focus is very user friendly in comparison to off hand dagger.

Its up to OP what he wants to do, they’re both very effective in the end and fulfill the roles properly but one does require a steep learning curve and adjustment in playstyle.

Just gonna add this for OP…. off hand dagger for the sake of mobility is a bad choice.

Yeah, mobility isn’t exactly what you want from the off-hand dagger. But that doesn’t make it a bad choice. For a support auramancer, focus is the superior choice, but if you mix it up a little, you can make OH dagger work.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYn0XCNYiVYC+NAcYilPAzNueX/rEXgQwGY4AEAegA-TJhHAB2eCAsvMAAPAAe2fAA

I find dagger more beneficial in this build but to each their own. Focus has tactical CC, but OH dagger synergizes well with stun-/immob-locking your enemy, and pressuring with condis. But to be fair, it may work just as well with focus.

sephiroth.4217:

I’ve always played D/D ele….

I find Focus is for newer Eles, they heavily rely on the invuln. It will always come down to your own skill level though, dagger is harder to use more efficiently but the pay off is better.

If you can be effective with Dagger off hand, by all means keep getting better at it.

(you should try water/air/temp build with lightning rod traits and surging runes on D/D) – turn your team into a moving stun field for 16 seconds, striking multiple enemies with lightning rod and laying out CC with Air and Earth.

Newer Eles ? Lmao, go try to play dd ele vs vM, 55 or DNL. Even with focus as soon as you use your invul you will get punished at high level (you need to access to a safe spot) so if you do not have it at all just imagine how useless you will be…I used to always call invul used by ennemy ele so if we can burst him, he dies and tf is over. In ranked it should be okay but in a competitive game you will feel the lack of this skill a lot, no doubts, no discussion needed.
So that’s why its meta.

It allows you to avoid damage so that you can save your healing for mates and not waste it for you, atm you also do not have that much stability so the invul helps about that. A small action (like a rez) can change a fight and even the game..this invul is a must.

Moreover, mobility is really awesome from offhand dagger but anyway mobility is good to decap or hold a point and it’s not your job you will only move to team fight in 99% of the cases or just do not play support ele and if you do well with matchups in 1v1 it’s ok.

Sometimes CC’ing someone to make it fail his burst is even better that healing so the extra (unblockable) CC from focus is a good way of supporting mates.