Guild Wars 2

staff or d/d ? anyone can help me ?

Staff. Full celestial or celestial/zerker mix. D/D is better for roaming.

This is copy pasted from another post from many months ago (probably around the time of Season 2) If you authored this, you’re welcome to take credit. I’ve changed a couple sections, but it’s mostly the same

There are a number of possible builds. most are variations of a 0/x/x/6/6 build

As an ele you are both our critical water fields, and a primary part of our DPS.

T(oughness) > V(itality). Obviously you need both, but if you’re getting mowed down fast, you should be putting more into toughness. It’s pretty useless to buff your Vitality pool if people can eat through it really fast.

I run a Soldiers gear Ele for commanding, (PTV with Melandru Runes. You can see my build Here: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAW...AACA7MQGglFA-w) Soliders gear is extremely survivable. If you are willing to put in the time and effort, Celestial stats are also viable, albeit a bit less tanky.
If you have a ton of Karma, you can get most of what you need from NPC vendors at the Temples in Orr.

Then run zerker items to balance it out. Some of the more hardcore players will mix armor sets to get a “perfect balance” that feels right to them. I’m don’t have that much patience. A good rule of thumb is: try to keep your Toughess >= 1600, and your armor at about 2500 or more. If you’re really trying to play support (short of a full-healer build), everything else is secondary to this stat.

Assuming your build is not gimping you, then you need to look at your play style in battles. To some extent, you’re going to have to learn by doing (and dying). Here are a few things I learned.

1. Stay on the tag. Sounds weird, a guy in a dress running around with Warriors in armor? Well, it turns out, you’re much less likely to die that way, especially if you’re in a group with others that can help buff you. Even if you aren’t, and I very often follow commanders while not in a group, you tend to benefit from buffs/heals anyway, but most importantly, you benefit from damage mitigation (most AOE damage only affects up to 5 members, except, importantly, siege weapons). Also, if you’re running on the outside, it will be much more likely someone will target you when they’re spamming for targets. Once they find a nice, squishy Ele, expect to die (until you learn all your escape tactics).
If you can learn how to stay with the tag (not easy, trust me, but you will get to that “aha!” moment), you’re going to find yourself much more effective and much more durable in big fights.

You dont need to dive in with the warriors and guardians in a big engagement, you can blink around the sides, and use staff Fire 4 (Burning Retreat) to dodge through the enemy zerg when the commander and hammer train is in the thick of a meelee battle. You have 1200 range. use it.

2. Don’t bring Daggers to a Staff fight. This doesn’t mean Staff > DD, in fact the opposite is true if you’re roaming solo (or trying to get to the zerg). But the Staff skills are designed to support large scale combat. Without them, you’re can’t really be a support Ele.

3. Don’t bring a Staff to a Dagger fight. One on one, you may as well /sit if someone attacks you and you’re holding a staff. Freaking uplevels can kill you. So, make sure you have daggers with you at all times, and equip them if you’re roaming. At least you’ll have a fighting chance. If you don’t have D/D experience, either just run around and die a lot until you learn, or jump into PvP. It’s basically the same tactics as WvW roaming, so it’s a really good place to practice. D/D is completely different than Staff when it comes to combat. You’ll need practice in both, but D/D (I found) is harder, but much more fun, to master.

4. For utilities, I use:
-Lightning Flash: This provides you with a 900 unit blink – which works while you’re channeling skills. Start a Meteor shower, the enemy zerg starts to roll over to you, you blink behind them and finish channeling your meteor shower! This skill is essential to avoiding damage and I never have it out of my toolbar.

-Mist Form: This is another essential utility that Eles can carry. It saves your life a thousand times over in Zerg V Zerg fights. When you CANNOT avoid the enemy hammer train, pop Mist Form, and scoot away! You’re invulnerable for three seconds and will survive even the heaviest hammer train with this utility. I use it to survive running through heavily sieged choke points ( you know, the ones where most of the zerg walks in and dies), in conjunction with double dodges. With both dodges, and the distance you can cover in mist form, you have an almost 1000 unit radius that you can move in any direction unimpeded with Mist form.

- Armor of Earth: This provides you 33% less damage, breaks stun, and provides stability. Stability is very important in WvW. If you’re in a group, try to use it sparingly if you can get stability from another member of your party. Keep it as a last defense. If you get snared, crippled, etc., remember that air 4

5. In most cases, you should be able to get into a tower/keep past a zerg right though the front door. (I’d say I can do it 98% of the time, depending on scouts/sight-lines.) Usually I just run up until I see the first guy run toward me (or try a ranged attack), then I hit mist, wait 2 seconds, then double-dodge, then hit stability. If you get downed before you’re in, use 2 to get in the gate if you’re close enough, then get back up when you’re out of combat.

6. Ether Renewal. Best friend. Using this heal forces you to take precaution since it’s so easily interrupted, but it will make you say " What conditions"

7. Don’t stay in the red rings. While this is not strictly an Ele thing, light classes need to pay attention to this much more than others. In very few cases, when you really need to stay in the rings, blast a water field where you need to be and hit Armor of Earth to mitigate the damage. Save your heal until you really need it. Most player spells won’t really kill you that fast, but focused AC fire can take you down really fast.

8. CC is your secondary reason for living. While you’re on tag, when the commander calls for CC, use Static (Air 5) to ring enemies so they can’t move, Frozen Ground (Water 4) to slow the enemy or Unsteady Ground (Earth 4) to cut off charges or retreats. This is what commanders mean when they call for “rings” and “lines”.

9. Got bags? Support Eles are supposed to do just that. So your primary focus should be Heal/CC. But don’t underestimate the bag-delivery potential of the Staff Ele AoE damage spells. Even the weak ones will tag your enemies so you get credit when they die. So while you’re on cool down, you can spam through them trying to land them on groups of enemies as you can. Or even Tab (or whatever you have Next Enemy bound to) and 1 all day long, and you’ll find tons of bags at your feet when the battle is over. As you get better at playing Ele, you’ll still even be standing!

Don’t forget, when you vapor form from the downed state, you can still pick up bags! if you’re going to die, and there’s bags on the ground, be sure to grab them with your downed vapor form.

D/D in a zerg is what i would call a “Skill Niche” as you need to be very good in order to manage it effectively. Serane is widely known for being an expert in this.

Here he is. He mainly plays D/D, Watch how he dodges around AoE, and uses the cantrips carefully.

you can see his build here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Serane-D-D-Ele-WvW-GvG-Dueling-Build/first#post4423054

Sometimes it is like Paco says – you gonna learn today

just do it and remember to have fun with it. smile dude!