Guild Wars 2

I’ve been a veteran top-tier raider in other MMO’s (raid leader for several server firsts back in my day) and this is my first character in GW2. I just hit 40, and up to now, I’ve been spending about 80% of my DPS time in fire, 15% in Air, and rarely ever using earth/water for DPS. I feel like this is probably a noob practice on my part, and I want to be able to maximize my gameplay.

Currently, I’ll only use water for emergency healing/kiting, then immediately switch back to fire or air. I’ll only use earth for AOE or additional might stacks (EQ/CE), then use #2 to stack a bunch of bleeds before promptly shifting back to fire/air.

I’m looking for advice from other skilled/experienced S/D Elementalists, specifically:

1. How often do you use earth/water for DPSing?
2. Any tips for DPS in water with S/D?
3. Any tips for DPS in earth with S/D?
4. Would it be worth it for me to carry and utilize another set of weapons for alternate skills or specific situations? I built for party support DPS through boons and AoE damage

1. Hardly ever. Water’s AA in scepter is really the only damage dealer. Shatterstone gives you almost 3 seconds of not doing damage and really interrupts the flow of DPS. Same with water 2 with staff and the AA there is worse (to balance the aoe heal most likely). Earth gives a nice bleed on AA in scepter, but Earth 5 is too easy to interrupt or just have your enemy walk out of it. There’s a wasted 4-5 seconds of no damage. Staff earth isn’t much better. At least Earth 2 in staff goes off faster.

2. Can’t think of any real dps tips. It’s only useful for clutch heals or using Water 2 to temporarily kill your dps to apply vulnerability.

3. If you want to land CE, you NEED some way of keeping your enemy in the aoe for the full channel, as well as making sure they can’t interrupt. Earth 4 doesn’t always cut it.

4. I am a heavy staff user. It’s great for support, combo fields and utility. I use water a lot more when I’m supporting for heals and Water 4. I still find earth a little lack-luster though, unless you really go for condition damage. Earth really only gets used to buff the group with protection (arcana 10 points) or Earth 4 to cripple groups of enemies. Earth 5 can be useful as well in a group setting to get an enemy off a party member and let them run away.

So to answer your question, I always keep a copy of every weapon. I will often go S/F for projectile heavy fights in a group situation, since staff lacks that.

I’m still learning too, but hopefully that helps you.

I appreciate the feedback, Iselia. This supports the feel I have been getting as an S/D since level 1, and the reason why I spend most of my time just sitting in fire.

Some of the other posts I’ve been reading from self-proclaimed expert elementalists state that if you’re not attunement swapping every few seconds, you’re doing it wrong. If that is the case for S/D, I’d want to know it. I don’t want to be “that guy” in dungeons.

Edit: Apparently, “as_S/D” comes out “a kitten D”. Profanity filters ftw!

Foof.4761:

1. How often do you use earth/water for DPSing?
2. Any tips for DPS in water with S/D?
3. Any tips for DPS in earth with S/D?
4. Would it be worth it for me to carry and utilize another set of weapons for alternate skills or specific situations? I built for party support DPS through boons and AoE damage

Im going to assume we are talking about normal in-world PvE and personal storyline here since you didnt specify anything.

1. I use earth as often as i can with the main purpose of getting up my rock armor and getting off a churning earth. Churning earth is amazing and deals more damage then anything else. Often when switching into earth i try to do something like this: Blind -> rock armor -> knockdown -> churning earth.

2. Water is never used for dps in any way, all the skills in water with the S/D setup is support in one way or another, except the autoattack ofcourse. Instead water should be used in situations where you are losing a fight, meaning you are losing hp faster then your opponent. Just go into water pop all the heals you have and apply frost aura while kiting.

3. See nr 1 for this.

4. If running dungeons most people seem to recommend staff since it has the most damage while still keeping you away from the mobs. I havent done any dungeons myself so far but the logic behind this is sound. Although outside of dungeons the game is easy enough for you to choose what fits you best.

Edit: Seems you are talking about dungeons afterall (saw your last reply). In that case i would recommend staff as i said above because the entire earth element of S/D seems nullified because of the fact that you should never be in melee range if at all possible. Running a weapon set in a situation where you cannot benifit from all it attunements seems like a waste to me and a nerf of your overall damage. But im not at all that home in the staff universe either and do not really know if the case is the same with the skills avalible from it.

Water is not for DPS, it is for support. Healing, condition clearing, and spamming vulnerability stacks with Shatterstone. If you have a number of heavy-hitters in the group (Warrior, thief, etc.), you’ll probably get more mileage out of stacking might to the gunwales and then spamming SS to get lots of vulnerability stacks up on the target so that the others hit even harder. Elementalist DPS is pretty lame in comparison.

If you have your heart set on doing DPS though, your best deeps with S/D usually comes from spamming rock shards in Earth. Gear for condition damage and power and just keep spamming rock shards to keep the bleed stacks high. Churning Earth when it’s up to burst out some damage and put even more bleed on the target. You do not have to be close to use Churning Earth; you can use Lightning Flash (utility) while channeling CE to teleport and take your AOE with you.

When doing group stuff with S/D, I swap fire to start up the might stacking combo (4, 2, 3, Arcane Wave) and get some burn on, then switch to earth to finish (4, 5) and then start spamming Rock Shards/Rock Barrier. If I’m group with a lot of heavy-hitters I replace the DPS filler with Shatterstone spam.

re your Pve question.

1. Ill use Shatterstone if I go to water for healing since I’m there anyway. It is a 4% increase in dps for 15 seconds. The casting time and animation make it hard to stack much and the skill does little dps so it’s not something I stay in. In a group it is much more effective due to increasing the dps of everyone.

Earth I go to at least whenever Churning Earth is off cooldown. Mobs in Pve are very bad at interrupting that and don’t move out of it. It is the best damage skill we have, especially when working on multiple mobs.

2. see above I guess
3. see above again I guess lol
4. Yes. Learn all the weapons. You say, “I built for party support DPS through boons and AoE damage” Still, there can be times you might find something else fits better. Staff is great in Dungeons. Great combo fields you can put down at range. Good Dps with both Lava font and especially Eruption, both short cooldowns. Flame Burst is not too shabby with a 5 sec burn. Throw in Shockwave when its up when you happen to be in Earth. Unsteady Ground to cripple which can help out the melee separate mobs if they want. Again if you happen to be in Earth, why not? Good healing both direclty and with combo fields in water for your party. It’s there why not use it? While you are there why not throw in an Ice Spike for a 5% increase in your parties’ dps for 10 seconds?