Guild Wars 2

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-o3c;2B2kU0y4-NkY0;9;402G;0248036146;4Ss0;3H7W3H7W30D

Basically after testing out a few different variations of Celestial Elementalist, with both D/F and D/D, I have found that this build gives the best results.

It revolves around the use of Fire traits to help maintain huge amounts of might stacks, you can easily get 20+ might stacks on yourself after the first 15 seconds of a fight. The reason focus is used over dagger is partially due to the strength of fire aura with the fire traits. You get a fire aura when you switch to fire, which can be extended with the skill and the fire aura trait gives you a ton of might just from applying the aura, let alone being struck. Blinding ashes is just icing on the cake, and burning fire makes your cantrips just add to the mightspam.

The focus is also helpful for the air and earth skills as well, as they can really make lich form necromancers and power rangers nonexistent for your party long enough to take them out. With focus, you have marginally weaker mobility without RtL, so the FGS makes up for that. You’ll spend most of your team in teamfights doing tons of damage while being really tanky. It also performs very well in 1v1 from what I’ve seen. While D/D is more dependent on landing burstier OH dagger skills in fire during 1v1s, D/F with the fire traits lets you overwhelm your opponents with might stacks, which lets you win most encounters should you dodge/invuln enemy burst.

Water/Arcane traits are standard, nothing new to see there. So basically, what this build lacks in mobility compared to D/D, it makes up for higher support, survivability, and much higher sustained damage from the extra might. Its a great build, and I firmly believe it to be among the strongest ele builds that will develop in this strange new meta. Only a staff build really gives it competition, and thats in the support/CC side rather than the damage side.

Been running that exact trait setup since the patch yesterday and have been loving it, it’s pretty similar to the D/F build I had been using the last few months (6/0/0/2/6).

I run the same skills except I replace armor of earth with Glyph of Elemental Power. It’s an “I win” button against certain classes if you use it in the right attunement. Fire procs 2 stacks of burning, which lets you burn through bunkers like nothing. Water is situational but really good for 1v1s against other eles. Air shuts down burst builds pretty hard. Earth makes it hard to let people escape.

I take Sigil of Hydromancy for an extra attack to add into spikes. This build is pretty close range so it synergizes well (plus nobody expects the down state synergy).

I take Runes of the Traveler because I’m lazy and like the passive movement speed but the condition and boon duration are nice now that they’re so much harder to get.

Other than that I’d suggest trying the build with Carrion instead of Celestial. With GoeP Fire it’s pretty terrifying and with the extra water traits it feels like the build has more sustain with less healing power now. With all the active defenses and cc that focus has it seems to work better for me.

I ve been messing around with basically similar traits but with s/f instead of d/f and burning duratin runes and burning precision mostly for more burning duration.
Basically i traded 1 cantrip for GoeP wich i activate in fire almost every time and with 50% more burning it hurts a lot.In fact due to burning i sometimes feel i wear down people faster than i did with s/f FA before patch !! those 4k burning ticks !!
Also guys incase you havent already found out Arcane Precision is bugged (??) and has NO ICD :d
Perma weakness has never been easier before and for that i traded renewing stamina and just equiped an energy sigil
Basically the reason i went s/f was that i wanted goep and more burning uptime but i had to give up more survivability than i had with your d/f build (which is amazing btw).
So i needed more range.

Also im pretty sure that right now Stop Drop and Roll is just the best adept trait in water by far..better than the master traits imho..

@Serious I will not run carrion on elementalist, ever. Its because burning is likely going to be nerfed at high condition damage levels, and I’m not too keen on the idea of losing all my damage when I switch out of fire, after all I don’t take burning precision. Celestial is needed to be tanky and to do good direct damage as well.

@Avead I may switch to stop drop and roll, its what Phanta runs in his build, and its probably a bit stronger than the frost aura without protection on aura traits.

This is what I’ve been running too, except Stop, Drop, and Roll rather than Soothing Ice. Soothing Ice icd is 20sec :P, so not that good imo.

Is this what you guys run WvW roam/small group and sPVP? I have been running this in sPvP and its a really nice setup….I have not tested this in WvW.

Pazu.8320:

This is what I’ve been running too, except Stop, Drop, and Roll rather than Soothing Ice. Soothing Ice icd is 20sec :P, so not that good imo.

I think Soothing Ice>Stop,Drop, and Roll since it gives you reduced damage+chill+regen no matter the attunement with cleansing water that is an extra of any condition removed while also giving you some direct damage reduction. You could get a cripple or chill and probably not even know it because soothing ice procced.

Medi-guard opens with a pretty much guaranteed judges burn and soothing ice wiped it immediately with cleansing water which would probably reduce their damage somewhat if they are running the 7% damage against burning foes and/or not activate the extra fury against a foe with 3stacks of burning as an application example and it didn’t cost you a dodge.

Celestial D/F has always been an alternative to D/D but was never and is still not “the way to go”. Many of your arguments are a bit weird and do not make sense IMHO.

First of all, there is absolutely no need to take focus for fire aura. With the new fire aura and burning fire traits and sigil of battle, you can easily reach 25 mighstacks and maintain them, given you use hoelbrak or strength runes which is the case for your build. Even this (without fire aura from focus) is a bit of an overkill although I run the same sigils and runes on d/d since I like to reach 25 stacks a bit earlier.

While D/D is more dependent on landing burstier OH dagger skills in fire during 1v1s, D/F with the fire traits lets you overwhelm your opponents with might stacks, which lets you win most encounters should you dodge/invuln enemy burst.

That makes no sense at all. There is no difference in might stacks if you compare offhand dagger to offhand focus in pvp, given you run sigil of battle + rune of strength/hoelbrak and the fire traits. You cannot expect to land comet in your fire field so the only difference between those weapons is the cooldown on earth #4. But as I already mentioned, the 25 mightstacks can already easily be reached and maintained by offhand dagger. So why would offhand dagger be MORE dependent on landing “bursty” fire #4 and fire #5 skills?? There are no focus skills that deal sustained damage to justify this statement. Ring of fire and especially firegrab deal tons of damage. Now with the new fire trait that reduces cooldowns by 33% (which is quite a lot), offhand dagger has received a huge buff while offhand focus didn’t because the strength of focus revolved around earth #4 and earth #5. So if there is a way to go NOW, it’s dagger and not focus.

cursE.1794:

Celestial D/F has always been an alternative to D/D but was never and is still not “the way to go”. Many of your arguments are a bit weird and do not make sense IMHO.

First of all, there is absolutely no need to take focus for fire aura. With the new fire aura and burning fire traits and sigil of battle, you can easily reach 25 mighstacks and maintain them, given you use hoelbrak or strength runes which is the case for your build. Even this (without fire aura from focus) is a bit of an overkill although I run the same sigils and runes on d/d since I like to reach 25 stacks a bit earlier.

While D/D is more dependent on landing burstier OH dagger skills in fire during 1v1s, D/F with the fire traits lets you overwhelm your opponents with might stacks, which lets you win most encounters should you dodge/invuln enemy burst.

That makes no sense at all. There is no difference in might stacks if you compare offhand dagger to offhand focus in pvp, given you run sigil of battle + rune of strength/hoelbrak and the fire traits. You cannot expect to land comet in your fire field so the only difference between those weapons is the cooldown on earth #4. But as I already mentioned, the 25 mightstacks can already easily be reached and maintained by offhand dagger. So why would offhand dagger be MORE dependent on landing “bursty” fire #4 and fire #5 skills?? There are no focus skills that deal sustained damage to justify this statement. Ring of fire and especially firegrab deal tons of damage. Now with the new fire trait that reduces cooldowns by 33% (which is quite a lot), offhand dagger has received a huge buff while offhand focus didn’t because the strength of focus revolved around earth #4 and earth #5. So if there is a way to go NOW, it’s dagger and not focus.

Tell that to the abjured who won the NA ESL game earlier today with 2 people playing celestial D/F, the exact same build.

But I don’t really care to argue with you. Choices on the details of a build, which are often major, have relatively little impact on the outcome of a pvp match in this game, which is more about strategy and communication than the raw optimization of the builds themselves. The whole point of me even posting this thread in the first place was to spread awareness that there is way more than just D/D that is viable on an elementalist, but I think you agree with that as well.

Its a good build, but I wouldn’t call it “the way to go”…
More like “one way to go”…

Also, with the crazy amounts of burning flying around, I’d take stop, drop and roll instead of ice auras on crits.

Yeah I know fire saftey is more important than ice packs right now. I have changed to that in the build I run but I haven’t updated it yet.

Do you think this can perform as well with a more defensive set up, like using earth line instead of arcane?

SrebX.6498:

Do you think this can perform as well with a more defensive set up, like using earth line instead of arcane?

That’s an oxymoron as Arcana has the superior defense.

SrebX.6498:

Do you think this can perform as well with a more defensive set up, like using earth line instead of arcane?

No…. arcane is mandatory on all celetial builds, as is water.

You could go earth/water/arcane, which is honestly better on cele staff and d/d. D/F is best using fire/water/arcane for the extra mightstacking from the extra fire aura and the earth/air skills make stone heart and rock solid feel like overkill for it. On staff though you need earth/water/arcane since you need rock solid and stone heart to cover ether renewal and to rez people, since cele staff is a supder duper ultra rez build.

nearlight.3064:

SrebX.6498:

Do you think this can perform as well with a more defensive set up, like using earth line instead of arcane?

No…. arcane is mandatory on all celetial builds, as is water.

You could go earth/water/arcane, which is honestly better on cele staff and d/d. D/F is best using fire/water/arcane for the extra mightstacking from the extra fire aura and the earth/air skills make stone heart and rock solid feel like overkill for it. On staff though you need earth/water/arcane since you need rock solid and stone heart to cover ether renewal and to rez people, since cele staff is a supder duper ultra rez build.

I disagree celestial lets you take advantage of the fact that our weapon sets are truly diverse in attacking being direct+condition damage/defense. Celestial is great on elementalist because of how we do our damage with a mix of dots and direct damage you can never go wrong with celestial. You just wont be the best direct damage dealer there is nor the best condition build. If you build tanky you can with traits and celestial you would augment condition removal, healing, and defensive modifers like protection.

Arcana doesn’t benefit from celestial more than any other trait line we have. Every trait line has multiple traits that benefit from the stats on celestial.

oZii.2864:

nearlight.3064:

SrebX.6498:

Do you think this can perform as well with a more defensive set up, like using earth line instead of arcane?

No…. arcane is mandatory on all celetial builds, as is water.

You could go earth/water/arcane, which is honestly better on cele staff and d/d. D/F is best using fire/water/arcane for the extra mightstacking from the extra fire aura and the earth/air skills make stone heart and rock solid feel like overkill for it. On staff though you need earth/water/arcane since you need rock solid and stone heart to cover ether renewal and to rez people, since cele staff is a supder duper ultra rez build.

I disagree celestial lets you take advantage of the fact that our weapon sets are truly diverse in attacking being direct+condition damage/defense. Celestial is great on elementalist because of how we do our damage with a mix of dots and direct damage you can never go wrong with celestial. You just wont be the best direct damage dealer there is nor the best condition build. If you build tanky you can with traits and celestial you would augment condition removal, healing, and defensive modifers like protection.

Arcana doesn’t benefit from celestial more than any other trait line we have. Every trait line has multiple traits that benefit from the stats on celestial.

imo arcana is mandatory as it offers you a lot of sustain an might stacking via EA (a way to make celestial even more worth it as might affects both power and condi dmg), perma vigor, a lot of fury (if not perma) and quite some protection as well

Without elemental contingency it’s far from perma fury.

Tarkan.5609:

oZii.2864:

nearlight.3064:

SrebX.6498:

Do you think this can perform as well with a more defensive set up, like using earth line instead of arcane?

No…. arcane is mandatory on all celetial builds, as is water.

You could go earth/water/arcane, which is honestly better on cele staff and d/d. D/F is best using fire/water/arcane for the extra mightstacking from the extra fire aura and the earth/air skills make stone heart and rock solid feel like overkill for it. On staff though you need earth/water/arcane since you need rock solid and stone heart to cover ether renewal and to rez people, since cele staff is a supder duper ultra rez build.

I disagree celestial lets you take advantage of the fact that our weapon sets are truly diverse in attacking being direct+condition damage/defense. Celestial is great on elementalist because of how we do our damage with a mix of dots and direct damage you can never go wrong with celestial. You just wont be the best direct damage dealer there is nor the best condition build. If you build tanky you can with traits and celestial you would augment condition removal, healing, and defensive modifers like protection.

Arcana doesn’t benefit from celestial more than any other trait line we have. Every trait line has multiple traits that benefit from the stats on celestial.

imo arcana is mandatory as it offers you a lot of sustain an might stacking via EA (a way to make celestial even more worth it as might affects both power and condi dmg), perma vigor, a lot of fury (if not perma) and quite some protection as well

You can get fury and might stacking from fire and air respectively. No trait line matches fire when it comes to might stacking and fury. The vigor is probably the best thing you get from arcana. EA has that one extra heal/condi removal but I don’t think it’s mandatory anymore.

Celestial + Strength is so fare behind from Soldier + Pack and Signet of Intelligence now, both in terms of damage and sustain.

So much you don’t even need Focus and can pick Dagger.

Am having no trouble killing D/F… as long as you have a ranged weapon, they’re very easy to kite, as long as you dodge their key skills (BS, the knockdown).

hard to see D/F ever being a thing.

oZii.2864:

The vigor is probably the best thing you get from arcana. EA has that one extra heal/condi removal but I don’t think it’s mandatory anymore.

No line offers more to Ele defence and sustain than Arcana. With Ele contingency thrown in, IMO it’s more mandatory than it’s ever been (for sustain). What line offers more?

I think it was a mistake not to have made Ele Attunement baseline and re-balance around that.

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

Celestial + Strength is so fare behind from Soldier + Pack and Signet of Intelligence now, both in terms of damage and sustain.

So much you don’t even need Focus and can pick Dagger.

Celestial does far more damage because it has some ferocity though. I know your build and like to play it, but not having any ferocity makes crits really unremarkable

scerevisiae.1972:

oZii.2864:

The vigor is probably the best thing you get from arcana. EA has that one extra heal/condi removal but I don’t think it’s mandatory anymore.

No line offers more to Ele defence and sustain than Arcana. With Ele contingency thrown in, IMO it’s more mandatory than it’s ever been (for sustain). What line offers more?

I think it was a mistake not to have made Ele Attunement baseline and re-balance around that.

You can get prot from earth line on aura’s, you can get stability attuning from earth, you get reduced cripple, chill, immobilize durations, and stone heart from earth, +180 toughness while in earth. Rock solid will guarantee you get at least more than half of a ether renewal channel off.

Fire line gives you fury and might stacking that is un matched by any other trait line and it also has condition removal, which will have synergy with soothing disruption and cleansing water.

Air has movement speed, fury/swiftness, but I think it offers more utility than damage at least for my favorite traits in air line.

Water doesn’t really need to be talked about because of the sustain.

There was a post running around about the cooldown reduction on attunements with arcana and it came out to pretty much the same prepatch I think because of the GCD IIRC.

I ran around again last night with no arcana with a fire/air/water and the only thing I missed was movement speed from Air, but the damage was so good.

@oZii the main flaw in your argument comparing earth to arcane for the survivability it brings is that elemental shielding simply cannot apply protection as often or as efficiently as elemental attunement can, nor does it apply protection to allies unless you take poweful auras, which will probably mean you have comparatively poor group condition removal since you won’t have cleansing water (or AoE regen to proc it for allies). Not to mention, you’ll have 10% less boon duration, but that is comparatively minor.

The main strength of the celestial elementalist has been its ability to provide excellent, almost passive group support through normal rotations, while being tanky, capable in most 1v1 matchups, and having the damage and conditon removal in either cleave/AoE to succeed. Without arcana, that group support level is a fair bit lower. You can get around it with aura share and cleansing wave, but its not comparable in my opinion because of all the things you have to give up to make it work.

oZii.2864:

earth line
[…]
I ran around again last night with no arcana with a fire/air/water and the only thing I missed was movement speed from Air, but the damage was so good.

prot on aura existed before the patch, and hasn’t really changed all that much.

arcane offer so much more than earth

• attunement CD reduction (still matters for any D/?)
• arcane has more prot on demand, and more prot uptime
• arcane is the only line that provides vigour from 2 sources
• another deal-breaker: on-demand arcane group heal + 2x group condi cleanse + group regen

no other line comes close.

i’m as bored as anyone about having to keep speccing water/arcane for the foreseeable future but with trait lines as they are there’s no way i’d run anything else if i were serious about winning.

oZii.2864:

scerevisiae.1972:

oZii.2864:

The vigor is probably the best thing you get from arcana. EA has that one extra heal/condi removal but I don’t think it’s mandatory anymore.

No line offers more to Ele defence and sustain than Arcana. With Ele contingency thrown in, IMO it’s more mandatory than it’s ever been (for sustain). What line offers more?

I think it was a mistake not to have made Ele Attunement baseline and re-balance around that.

You can get prot from earth line on aura’s, you can get stability attuning from earth, you get reduced cripple, chill, immobilize durations, and stone heart from earth, +180 toughness while in earth. Rock solid will guarantee you get at least more than half of a ether renewal channel off.

Fire line gives you fury and might stacking that is un matched by any other trait line and it also has condition removal, which will have synergy with soothing disruption and cleansing water.

Air has movement speed, fury/swiftness, but I think it offers more utility than damage at least for my favorite traits in air line.

Water doesn’t really need to be talked about because of the sustain.

There was a post running around about the cooldown reduction on attunements with arcana and it came out to pretty much the same prepatch I think because of the GCD IIRC.

I ran around again last night with no arcana with a fire/air/water and the only thing I missed was movement speed from Air, but the damage was so good.

you ate talking about earth + air = protection, fury, swiftness

I dont see the reason behind that as i can get all three boons (and more, like vigor!) from arcana while also being able to take EA, which adds a lot to your healing capacity and survivability

ether renewal may have some good healing + condi remove, but is only reliable if you have stability (and even then a trickery thief will rip you)
the signet offers you good healing that doesn’t have counterplay apart from perma poison (which is harder now since it no longer stacks in duration) and you dont need to interrupt any rotation/dmg dealing (which is also nice in wvw/pvp as ether renewal takes all pressure from your opponent -> positioning/dmg focus/healing…)

Fire, Water, Arcana just offers you more than Fire, Earth, Water (taking water as a granted trait line)
the only time i could see 10110 being more viable than 10011 is if you are dueling a pure condi opponent…

I’m new to Ele, especially in sPvP.
I’d like to give this a try, can anyone help me with a rotations? or any tips about how to start a fight? which skills are my harder hitting ones? things like this

The thing about d/f is that there are really no standard rotations. I mean, you can go the usual air → fire → earth → water but the skills are situational.

important to hit:
air #1
fire #2 and #3, with /D #5 (against burning targets)
earth #2 and #4
water #3 can be useful to hit

Air #5 (doesnt matter whether its D/F or D/D) → Fire #3 is a usual combo
alternatively you can also fire #3 + lightning flash right before the explosion part

but there is a lot more to ele than just rotations and might stacking

Do you think d/f ele could get away with out going arican or water line kind of a fire earth air build? Fire and air should be all the dmg you could want with a bit of def build in and earth is the full on def line as needed. You get the earth 4 and 5 cd low 17 sec condtion remove x3 and a 34 sec invabitly for 4 sec.

Something like this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodhcMowhdOwoBsSMQAYRBIAEEndwLoIKXgOwQE-TlyHABKfCAESJRiq/wkSwhUKskyMv0CIy+DA8AA+SHgogWL-w

Arcane and Water is pretty mandatory in any ele build. I mean, sure you can spec into others but it won’t be as good.

scerevisiae.1972:

Am having no trouble killing D/F… as long as you have a ranged weapon, they’re very easy to kite, as long as you dodge their key skills (BS, the knockdown).

hard to see D/F ever being a thing.

Can’t tell if serious.

I mostly miss RTL from dagger off-hand…

but I just like focus so much more at the moment.
It gives me these nice defensive skills like reflects and invulnerability which are very nice for me, in this meta where everyone is doing so much dmg in so little time

Lettuce.2945:

scerevisiae.1972:

Am having no trouble killing D/F… as long as you have a ranged weapon, they’re very easy to kite, as long as you dodge their key skills (BS, the knockdown).

hard to see D/F ever being a thing.

Can’t tell if serious.

totes srs. but then i play Ele a lot so i guess it’s easier for me to beat them.

D/F is a lower damage, lower healing, lower mobility version of D/D. the only area where D/F is better than D/D is vs pure condi classes, but now that diamond skin is “free”, even that advantage is moot.

The d/f earth fire arcain build i been running seems to work well. The ideal is to get fury from blasting fires fields and to get protection from aruas. I am not sure how it would work in spvp it seems ok in wvw.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodhcMowhdOwuB8RMQAYRBIAMAmewLoIWrhkYZA-TlyHABJq+DTKB7RpxQKDG4EAskSMv0CIy+DA8AA+SHApAYSrF-w

If you time things out right you should have perma fury and protection.

Ok so I went back in threw on the D/F. Randomly ended up in a 1v1 with a D/P SA thief took a while but I won never really felt in danger because of earth 5 on standby to go with cantrips.

Later I ran into about 3 condi engi’s and I held up for a while actually while I was able to still get away when I was low I couldn’t get a stomp though just because I had to use about everything to stay up against the conditions.

Overall I’d give Off hand Focus a B right now.

Fire 5 is actually really good if you run -condition duration food + hoelbrak it’s basically a free removal almost.

Flamewall is wayyyy to awkward it just doesn’t fit for me. It has that cast time for so little damage and 1s of burning it’s just horrible imo.

The rest of focus skills are good. It is less damage and I feel you rely on Lightning Whip spam and drakes breath more. I think fresh air and lightning rod are good compliments for the extra damage on interrupt I don’t think either of those traits outshines the other with focus off-hand.

The missing piece is that one really good damaging ability like a fire grab, ring of fire, or RTL,

It needs another damage option probably on fire 4. Flamewall is just so bad I’d feel better wasting time casting if it was something like 3 stacks of burning or even a reduced cast time.

Focus offhand always feels like a little voice saying “I could have killed him faster if I had dagger off hand” on the other side of the coin you will survive a little bit longer.