Guild Wars 2

I’ve been reading up on various builds and discussions within this forum since I hit level 80 on my Elementalist and have been trying to decide on what route I want to take for WvW and PvE in terms of building and therefore equipment.

With that said, I’m hoping I can get some advice on my current build and perhaps suggestions on what works best for WvW and PvE. The reason for this is that I’m close to starting to build an exotic set and I obviously don’t want to pick something I may not use very long. As such, I’d appreciate any feedback or advice.

(Note, this is for PvE and WvW only, I run a different build for sPvP)

My current build is thus:

10 Fire – Burning Precision
25 Air – One With Air (I sometimes exchange this for Bolt to the Heart), Soothing Winds
10 Earth – Earth’s Embrace
15 Water- Cleansing Wave
10 Arcana – Elemental Attunement

The rare gear I’m currently using with this build is Rampagers for everything except boots and legs, which are Carrion. This is because I wanted some extra vitality for some more survivability. The runes on the armor are Lyssa.

The weapons I use are D/D Rampager’s on both with Bloodlust and Blood runes, while my staff is Cleric’s with a Water rune. The accessories and jewelry is a mix of vitality, precision, power, and critical damage increases.

Before someone says my build sucks or is all over the place, the thinking behind it, perhaps flawed, is a crit/condition build that takes advantage of always having decent conditions up while still having decent spike, some durability, and the ability to weapon switch roles for different aspects of PvE and WvW. It isn’t the best damage build, nor is it extremely tanky, but I am more or less looking for a build that can get the job done without focusing one extreme over the other, such as bunker builds or beserkers.

I’d appreciate any advice anyone has to give.

far as i know… one with air is broken. no effect at all.
consider using the auras, air:1. its a nice shout runbuff.

Your build is completely all over the place, you state that your thinking behind it is “Crit/Conditions” but you haven’t put many points into Air/Earth, it just doesn’t synergise. Also D/D requires you to be fairly tanky and extremely mobile as you are techincally operating at melee range. One with air does not work, with D/D you get 3 Aura’s so make sure you always take Zephr’s Boon for swiftness and fury, also consider taking Elemental Shield for protection on aura use or Earth’s Embrace, however I prefer protection.

You need to focus your stats more, focus on just 3 stats, for example, I run with Knights gear and the same on my jewelry so I focus Toughness, Power, Precision. Also think about your traits, try and get them to synergise with what you are trying to do.

One with Air does seem broken at first, but if you switch attunements then switch back to air, I’ve noticed it working. I only use it mostly in WvW to get from point A to point B faster, I usually switch it out for PvE. Although, I do see the benefit of Zephr’s Boon, so I’ll try using that.

As for the rest, I realize my build is all over the place and my items aren’t anywhere near complete. But basically what I’m shooting for in terms of stat focus, at least in this build, is precision, condition damage, power. I do have side stats of vitality for durability and maybe that’s where I run afoul. In PvE, I don’t have any problems with surviving, and in WvW it’s so hard to tell if I die because of my lack of durability or because I just get mobbed (I suspect the latter, my server is getting wrecked in WvW atm).

I’ve tried the tanky dps build that seems so popular now in sPvP and that’s pretty nice, but I suspect it might get nerfed reletively soon, so I’m not sure if I should invest time, karma, and dungeon runs into something that might not be so great soon.

I suppose my problem in deciding is because I’m not entirely certain what build serves the Elementalist best in WvW while keeping them able to be effective in dungeons at the sametime. My current build, with its flaws, works, but I’m sure I could do better, I’m just not sure on what path to take.

Thanks for the help so far, by the way.

Well I use D/D in WvW and in dungeons / PvE Events and have absolutely no problems what so ever. Sometimes I need to go ranged for some of the bosses, mainly in CoE to make it easier to avoid the circles the boss put’s down.

I basically run with 10 in Air, 10 in Earth, 20 in Water and 30 Arcana. I take Zephrys Boon, Elemental Shielding, Soothing Disruption, Cantrip Mastery, Elemental Attunent, Renewing Stamina and Evasive Arcana. For my utilities I use Glyph of Elemental Harmomy, Mist Form, Lightning Flash, Cleansing Fire.

Gear wise I use all Knights gear with 3 Earth Runes and 3 Speed Runes, on my weapons it’s Sigil of Battle, Sigil of Accuracy all my gear / accesories are exotic.

This gives me permanent Swiftness, Protection on Aura use, Lot’s of regen, high uptime on vigure, lot’s of mobility. I can also still kill people while I have no burst (like warriors or thieves) I can apply a lot of sustained damage, have numerous CC options and you are more mobile than any other profession (yes even thieves) and you are very, very hard to pin down. My guild can testify this as about 10 of them couldn’t pin me down to kill me the other day lol (we had switched servers, I stayed on the old server to kill them for a while).

I rarely die in WvW (only if I’m really, really zerged or a group of 5 catch me with my cantrips on CD) and I don’t lose 1v1’s and rarely lose 1v2’s the only profession that came close to downing me was a condition necro, I had trouble cleansing :P

Brenil.8957:

I’ve been reading up on various builds and discussions within this forum since I hit level 80 on my Elementalist and have been trying to decide on what route I want to take for WvW and PvE in terms of building and therefore equipment.

With that said, I’m hoping I can get some advice on my current build and perhaps suggestions on what works best for WvW and PvE. The reason for this is that I’m close to starting to build an exotic set and I obviously don’t want to pick something I may not use very long. As such, I’d appreciate any feedback or advice.

(Note, this is for PvE and WvW only, I run a different build for sPvP)

My current build is thus:

10 Fire – Burning Precision
25 Air – One With Air (I sometimes exchange this for Bolt to the Heart), Soothing Winds
10 Earth – Earth’s Embrace
15 Water- Cleansing Wave
10 Arcana – Elemental Attunement

The rare gear I’m currently using with this build is Rampagers for everything except boots and legs, which are Carrion. This is because I wanted some extra vitality for some more survivability. The runes on the armor are Lyssa.

The weapons I use are D/D Rampager’s on both with Bloodlust and Blood runes, while my staff is Cleric’s with a Water rune. The accessories and jewelry is a mix of vitality, precision, power, and critical damage increases.

Before someone says my build sucks or is all over the place, the thinking behind it, perhaps flawed, is a crit/condition build that takes advantage of always having decent conditions up while still having decent spike, some durability, and the ability to weapon switch roles for different aspects of PvE and WvW. It isn’t the best damage build, nor is it extremely tanky, but I am more or less looking for a build that can get the job done without focusing one extreme over the other, such as bunker builds or beserkers.

I’d appreciate any advice anyone has to give.

I can’t say I agree with this build. If your going for WvW, you really do not need a whole lot of utility as an Elementalist. The way they caculate kills now, you don’t even need to do most of the damage or be the one to stomp someone to get the credit. Simply laying AoE to enough people will net you a ton of kills. You do not need to be worried about getting killed, as once you move out of range most people tend to FF the closest target. Not many players are smart enough to push past the Bunkers/Melee and start dropping the ranged DPS first, which is why you need hardly any utility for WvW as a ranged class.

I almost always use a staff for WvW. The 1200 range lets me steal kills quite easily. Eruption works quite well on fools using Siege Weapons as you can target the wall next to them and still hit them. They are too busy aiming equipment to notice most of the time. Chain Lighting actually works quite well against small groups, better than Meteor Shower often times. You just have to learn to sit back and AOE DPS, rather than trying to kill a target, finsih him, and move on. Let your allies finish the target, you do enough damage and are close enough you still get the kill credit.

As for Builds, I go 30 Air, 10 Earth, and 30 Arcana. The Air abilites allow me to move around a bit faster and get my crit chance up. The free shocking aura is a nice tool if somebody gets a creep on you. I go for 10 in earth for the free Armor of Earth, and I go Arcana to build up my endurance. Why do you need endurance if your ranged? All the AoE from seige equipment. You can constantly keep dodging out of the circles while hitting people outside a gate or wall, which leaves you in battle much longer than having to retreat back every time you see a red circle. Your crits will regen your endurance, and your arcane powers will refill it another 25% each use. I use Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast with a range of 1500 works great, and you can always use Arcane Wave to just recharge your endurance if people are out of range. The only utlility I use is Ether renewal and cleansing fire, and I tend to get about 25-30 kills before I die usually.

I do however, tend to only go WvW with my guildies though, so it’t not like I am not getting supported. But you don’t have to bunker down or go all around to do well, WvW is about team work. Go out with your guild and play the role you want, for me that’s AoE/DD DPS, but I have people healing and protecting me as well most of the time. WvW is about team play, no class is going to go out there with a “holy grail” build and accomplish anything by themselves.

Brenil.8957:

Before someone says my build sucks or is all over the place, the thinking behind it, perhaps flawed, is a crit/condition build that takes advantage of always having decent conditions up

Yeah, I can see the purpose behind the build. Unfortunately, here is the sad truth:

10 Fire – Burning Precision

Crappy trait, but in this case your whole build is around it, so I won’t say anything bad about this one as it at least has good synergy with your stats and focus.

25 Air – One With Air

Not working, and horrible even if it was working. Why would you ever want this trait. No good elementalist stays 10 seconds in a single attunement, and that is the minimum amount of time for it to have even its most minimal effect.

(I sometimes exchange this for Bolt to the Heart),

Crappy trait that gives an average 5% damage.

Soothing Winds

Horrible trait. Even if you have 2k precision, it is still only 100 healing power. That is a pathetic amount of stats.

…………

Also, the 25 point air trait is absolutely not worth losing a major trait. Even channeling Arc Lightning with a 60% crit rate it it is only 4 vulnerability stacks which is at most 100 stat points or so. And that is the absolute best case scenario. Most of the time it is far worse.

10 Earth – Earth’s Embrace
15 Water- Cleansing Wave
10 Arcana – Elemental Attunement

Good, good and good.

So how do I recommend to fix all of this. First of all, take 5 points from air (it is only 2.3 crit chance) and move it to water. Pick up Soothing Disruption. Considering you are running 4 cantrips (including trait), that is by far the best choice.

Next, why the heck are you are you running dagger main-hand without Zephyr’s Boon. That is almost a disgrace, especially considering what your whole spec is about.

Secondly, since I guess that you want to keep 20 points in air, I guess Quick Glyphs is the best place to put those points in. Not much else decent to choose from.

the 25 air trait can be used with the 20% damage while in water and target is vulnerable trait, water 4 “piercing shards”, with a conjure to some effectiveness.

Vulnerability by itself is not impressive.

air trait 8 “inscription” i find to be very likable. combined with the harmony healing glyph it has utility and combat function by doubling all the glyphs abilities.
20 sec of swiftness on a single button press.
I have also used it with the runes of the centaur for a 30sec perpetual run buff.
but i like the earth runes better.
There are plenty of other ways to get perpetual run buff but the single button is a refreshing lack of complexity for the ele.

Let me preface by saying these are just my opinions…anyway,

If you want to run D/D in WvW, you really have to focus on survivability and defense. You are melee, and your manueverability really lends itself to being in the vanguard of your group, or harassing off to the flanks. Either way, you WILL be hit a lot, and you should expect lots of focus fire. So any kind of DPS or glass-cannon focused build is out the window.

Also, I think one of the best purposes for a D/D Ele in WvW is SHOCK. When two groups are just facing each other down at range, it can be a real game changer when a freaking lightly armored Elementalist just burst into the enemy group with RTL->Updraft, then does a bunch of AoE damage with fire, then gets away scot free with mist form. This brief moment of confusion and shock can really mess up a unit.

Just yesterday I was in a situation like I described above where I burst into a enemy group alone and just started reaming them. I was about back out, but then I noticed that the enemy was running, and I looked behind me to see that my group had actually decided to charge.

Anyway, as for my build…I run a shameless copy of DaPhoenix’s build (lol) which works very, very well in WvW…here is what I have:

Gear:
2 Invader’s daggers, bloodlust, battle
cleric’s gear, runes of undead
carrion accessories

Traits:
10 air, zephyr’s boon (perma-swiftness, no need for one with air at all)
20 water (the traits that gives vigor on cantrips, and cleansing wave)
10 earth (earth’s embrace)
30 arcane (elemental attunement, final shielding, evasive arcana)

Utilities and elite
Lightning flash, arcane wave, mistform, elemental

Edit:

Oh and for the heal, if you use glyph you can get perma-swiftness without having to ever switch out of air while traveling. But ether renewal may actually be better for some combat situations…it’s channelled, but the condition removal is awesome for escaping…and it synergizes wonderfully with mistform. I have contemplated dropping evasive arcana and picking up obsidian focus for the prot while channelling to further synergize with ether renewal…

cres can you break down the perma swiftness options here?

Sure thing…

With my current build, I can maintain perma-swiftness by simply staying in Air and casting shocking aura and the heal glyph whenever they are up, that is the easiest way.

If I want to use Ether Renewal, I cannot maintain permanent swiftness, but I can have a very high swiftness up time. I do this by doing something like…

RTL, shocking aura when it lands, switch to water, frost aura…switch to air when it’s up, RTL…etc, etc You can also do an updraft if there is a MOB behind you to target.

This is not perma-swiftness but it is probably like 80-90% swiftness.

Basically, I would just recommend you keep glyph up as your heal out of combat, and switch to Ether Renewal before you engage…or if you are close to enemy. It is much easier.