Guild Wars 2

Hey Ele Gurus,

I’m leveling up my alt now and am trying to understand the best way to gear my ele once I hit 80.

I play both PvE and WvW, but mostly WvW. My goal is to strike a balance of gear that works well in PvE and WvW. Ideally I’d prefer not to have two different sets of gear due to cost and limited bank slot reasons (I already have almost 20 bank slots reserved for my alts’ gear sets)

I see a lot of posts commenting about Celestial armor and how it’s a good balancing act for Ele’s due to the diverse nature of the profession. However, let’s assume that celestial is not an option because of my intense disdain for crafting. Also, celestial is expensive.

So I’m a little unsure of what approach to go with:
1) PVT
– Does this negatively affect my utility due to lacking healing power?
– Does kitten crit rate or condition damage affect my diversity?

2) Solidiers + Knights
– Lose some vit but gain valuable precision

3) Soliders + Clerics
– Lose some damage but gain healing power (even worth it?)

4) Complete mixup
– Try to recreate celestial as much as possible by mixing matching all different kinds of sets
– Should I bother focusing at all into condi? Should I just do P/Pr/V/T/Healing?
– Is healing power even worth spec’ing into? I read lots of posts about how underpowered that stat is

5) Zerker
– Generally a liability for my guild in WvW as I’d be rally bait… but supreme damage

6) Your suggestion here?

I like the idea of averaging out all my stats via #4 and possibly ignoring condi. Has anyone tried this before? I’d like to try in sPvP but you can’t mix & match there anymore.

I’ve read the post that clearly says Soldier’s is the way to go. However, I personally think that chart is very subjective and only really useful in PvE when factoring mobility and strategy is irrelevant.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

There’s no getting around full berserker in PvE. It will always be the best suit of gear. The only thing you’ll want to do is swap out some serker pieces in favor of assassin to get that extra 1% chance to cirt. Usuaully I think it’s only 1 piece (helm) but you’ll have to find out.

For WvW, you’re in the same boat I am. For staff a lot of people suggest serker as well since you’re back line and shouldn’t be hit. I’ve taken the approach that I want 2400 armor and 15k hp and built my gear around that assuming a x/x/x/4/4 starting point to y builds.

For ascended I chose this:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArIEwEIIGFUcdD-TFCEABSp0SiHAgiqw0meCnUmAwJAIR1H2SJIA-w

For exotic armor I chose this:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArIEwEIIGFUcdD-TlCEABaqyTLqC4kymtUCykSBpUCxiaAS8AAaTPBAnAAA-w

I wouldn’t mind feedback on this as well for the others that read this thread

WvW: I currently mix Soldiers and Knights armor, with ascended Celestial trinkets. Sometimes I swap out some trinkets/armor for Cavalier and Berserker if I’m feeling saucy. At the moment I run only Strength runes. Usually 0/10/10/20/30, sometimes 0/10/0/30/30. Food, usually Sharpening Stones and Plate of Truffle streak, and very occasionally Lemongrass Poultry Soup if conditions are annoying me.

PvE: Mostly Berserker armor these days, and tend to swap trinkets between Berserker/Cavalier/Celestial depending on what I’m doing or mood. Same traits as WvW at the moment (can’t be bothered to keep resetting them as I switch between WvW and PvE; it would be nice to have trait presets or even entire build presets). Food, usually Sharpening Stones and Plate of Truffle Steak.

Traits for both are usually Zephyr’s Boon, Armor of Earth, Soothing Wave, Cleansing Wave, Cleansing Water/Powerful Aura, Blashing Staff/Renewing Stamina, Elemental Attunement, Evasive Arcana.

All pretty standard. Again I vary it a little depending on what I’m doing. I usually play with D/D or Staff.

You may notice I switch things round a bit. I don’t think there is one build for everything. I tend to switch things until I have a comfortable ballpark figure for what I’m doing (i.e. do I need to trade a bit of toughness for power, etc.). I used to analyze numbers but I got tired of that and found it didn’t make much difference; its all so situational. As long as you have a good idea how ele works, you can probably make some good choices for each situation (for example I doubt I’d use quite the same build for WvW solo/small group roaming as I would if I was running with a large zerg).

Hi there!

I just rolled an ele but my fianceé uses one since a half year or so almost exclusively in wvw and outdoor pve. The thoughts I share are coming from watching her play and fighting together.

She plays a classic support staff ele 0/0/2/6/6. Armor pieces are PVT the accessories are zerkers-knights. One celestial back item. She has 19k HP and 2700 armor. Low crit chance and low crit damage. Next to zero healing power.

You shouldn’t bother with healing power, most of the heals are coming from blasted water fields anyways. Regen is useful but has terrible scaling and it cannot save anybody from bursts.

Crit chance and Ferocity useful stats but if you are a backliner like she is your main job is to cleanse and provide utility fields and/or CC.

A more offensive playstyle needs more offensive stats of course. The ele is a force multiplier. Everybody wants the team’s ele alive and the enemy’s ele dead. What we do: we always ask for support. We try to gather some “paper” classes in our party. Rangers, thiefs, mesmers, other elemetalists. A theif is really thankful if he has a place to run and recover after killing the enemy’s backliners. Work as a team an an ele is undestructable. For instance I used to lay my traps unter the elementalists to provide valuable seconds if a thief tries to burst her down. Our thief friend puts the shadow return next to her, etc…

TL:DR: Stay alive so you can keep others alive.