Guild Wars 2

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of solo WvW while Seafarer’s Rest has been rising in the ranks. Most of it has been pretty unworthy of video capture (kill someone, RtL away from zerg, you know the drill), but once in a while I get some fun fights (versus people with zero skill, yes)

Now, the build I’ve been running so far was this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhImkblx5gjEAEFmcSoABjChUeMDO2A;TgAKbM2IsxWjzGpNjCmiA

Gear was generally a lot of Power/Tough/Vit (5 karma pieces, 3 pieces of WvW jewelry) with a few pieces of Cleric’s / Valk / Berserker / Knight to fill out the slots. It’s your normal tanky Elementalist that relies heavily on attunement swapping to stay alive and deal decent damage. My crit % is laughably low, but I have very high Power from pre-stacking Bloodlust and getting high Might stacks from Combos (+ Battle Sigil).

What I’ve been thinking about instead, mostly inspired from Phantaram’s ( http://www.twitch.tv/phantaram ) excellent S/D build, was mixing it up a bit to run 20 Air/20 Water/30 Arcana. The reason that build is so strong offensively is the fact that Air for Scepter is just really powerful. If you’re popping Air 2, 3 and 4 every time you attune to Air (which also does an instant nuke) with the 10% damage trait, you are heavily increasing your overall damage. This leaves 2 issues, though:

1) I lose the Armor of Earth from Earth 10, which is a pretty huge part of survivability.

2) The Cantrip Regen + Vigor trait is amazing, but it’s hard to justify when you only have 2 Cantrips as opposed to 3. When AoE procced at 50% it was extremely beneficial for surviving as it also gave me additional dodge rolls (more offensive power from Evasive Arcana) and stacked more Regen (which ticks decently with some Cleric’s gear).

This is Phantaram’s S/D build which is what got me thinking, but I would run it with Lightning Flash as I find it invaluable for WvW roaming + landing Churning Earth on huge zergs for giggles (and I’d obviously have Arcane Shielding + Evasive Arcana): http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEIQJArYhImOblR5gjDAEFmoiQRFOUeMTM1A;ToAA0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1MsYSA

Any thoughts on what you would do? Should I just completely bypass the Regen/Vigor trait and pick up Stop, Drop and Roll as he did? Or run Regen/Vigor with only 2 Cantrips?

Or should I just go the more survivable route and stick with my old build?

I’ll be playing around a bit with some variations of this build today, but figured I’d ask here if anyone had any good ideas.

Tried a bit of 20Air/20Water/30Arcana with V and III despite only having 2 Cantrips. The extra damage from 20 Air is definitely noticeable when I’m going through the standard attunement rotations, but I think I’ll end up missing Armor of Earth a lot too. Hard to decide what I like the most yet, didn’t have many hard fights since the respec.

Need to fight this Riverside Guardian who destroyed me before the respec again, see if it makes any difference.

Seems like people on the Elementalist forum here are more interested in complaining about how underpowered we are as opposed to discussing efficient builds and sharing strategy to do well. A shame.

They discussed 1 build and the developer at his first next post stated he’s watching it closely (to nerf it).

Lesson learned, mouths shut.

Vaerah.4907:

They discussed 1 build and the developer at his first next post stated he’s watching it closely (to nerf it).

Lesson learned, mouths shut.

Seems like an odd attitude to have when it helps people improve. :p

Here’s some random fight I had versus some Arborstone people over a supply camp with the new build: