Guild Wars 2

I remember reading a few joking comments about Izzy’s “ideal” 15/15/15/15/10 ele build and how eles are best fit to use everything, so for fun I tried making the most balanced, but still decent, ele build I could some days ago. With the coming of celestial gear for pve, I figured I’d post for no particular reason.

I ended up going with this.

Equipment:
Dagger/Focus
Celestial Amulet, Valkyrie gemstone
2 Runes of the Monk
2 Runes of Water
2 Runes of Divinity

Stats:
Power-1356
Precision-1381
Tough-1406
Vitality-1381
CDamage-415
Boon-50%
Crit damage-39

Traits:
15 air- Zephyr’s Boon
10 earth- Elemental Shielding (stone splinters now that it’s fixed)
15 water-Cleansing Wave
30 arcana-Elemental Attunement, vigorous renewal, evasive arcana (just a staple EA roller)

Utility: Signet of Air, Armor of Earth, X, Fiery Greatsword (for use near walls)
“You’ll be sort of good at everything, but not great at anything, which is an ele personified”- Master Blixx

It was only made out of boredom, idk how good it’d be for serious pvp, but it should be okay seeing as it’s just the popular traits put together again. Does anyone else have a decent build that better achieves this aspiration towards balance? After all, if you play the way anet wants you to, you’ll never be nerfed* :p

*This statement is not guaranteed or based on any factual evidence

I am actually going for full celestial armor, weapons, and jewelry; with divinity runes and a soldiers back piece.

With my traits being spread (or what I like to call rainbowed). My build is 10/10/10/10/30.

My stats on the build are:
Power: 1568
Precision: 1512
Toughness: 1547
Vitality: 1547
Healing: 596
Cond dmg: 596
Crit dmg: +80%
For traits I am running:
Fire: IV or VI
Air: VI
Earth: VI
Water: III or V or VI
Arcane: V, VI, XI
Still deciding on the water and fire trait lines for the adept.

I know its all over the place and not a lot of power toughness or vitality but I think with the way Dev’s want us to play an Ele it might just be good.

Any Tips or suggestions will be welcome.
Especially with my fire and water trait decision.

Edit: This is with no food buffs at all.

Except the Devs are quite clueless about playing an ele. If you had watched the live stream, you would realize this. If all played the way the devs wanted us to, we would be just about worthless across the board.

covenn.7165:

…just about worthless across the board.

Navzar.2938:

“You’ll be sort of good at everything, but not great at anything, which is an ele personified”- Master Blixx

A matter of perspective.

I’m excited about exotic Celestial gear. I already have Celestial Ascended trinkets for my Ele (with a zerker amulet), so it’ll be nice to get out of the hodgepodge armor I currently have and into true multi-stat armor.

From previous mmo experiences I have learnt you have to specialize in one main area as a start to be great at pve and pvp.. Whether that is dps/burst/heals or tank is up to the player to decide.. Being hybrid in all areas won’t take you too far specially when facing against a player that does focus on one of these attributes. in Gw2, I find it best to concentrate from two to three main attributes while the rest to be moderate and low in value. For example my Ele is high in power, precision and critical damage, moderate in Hp and armor and mediocre at the rest. My main area of focus is BURST.

LightningBlaze.4913:

From previous mmo experiences I have learnt you have to specialize in one main area as a start to be great at pve and pvp.. Whether that is dps/burst/heals or tank is up to the player to decide.. Being hybrid in all areas won’t take you too far specially when facing against a player that does focus on one of these attributes. in Gw2, I find it best to concentrate from two to three main attributes while the rest to be moderate and low in value. For example my Ele is high in power, precision and critical damage, moderate in Hp and armor and mediocre at the rest. My main area of focus is BURST.

Yet GW2 has specifically positioned itself to do things differently from other MMOs. In the case of the Elementalist, every weapon set forces them to be able to do everything: direct damage, condition damage, control, support, healing, defensive buffs, mobility, etc, so using an armor set that gives you more raw stats allows you to mimic the stat multiplicity that something like Zerker armor has.

Celestial really has no place in any meta. PvE design favors direct damage. Conditions get overwritten, and if you party with a condition necro or engineer, all those condition damage stats are pointless since both professions are better at stacking bleeds and have better variety in their condition damage. sPvP and WvW favors burst mitigation and sustain, so Clerics and PVT. You can better support team members with clerics, and if you’re a solo roamer, PVT offers the same damage as Celestial, has more burst mitigation and is relatively easy to get.

I tried out a 20/20/20/10/0 build, it worked out, really well surprisingly, the only downside was if i were in a 1v1 and bursted the enemy down (swap from earth —> Fire --→ Air) then i was wide open for way too long, but it had quite a bit of survivability and a LOT of damage.

I used all the element CD reduction traits (this build was also made as a joke) with the more damage while enemys were Burning, Bleeding, and Bolt to the Heart. I used both a Staff (really strong if i was in a 1v1 on a point or was in the back able to rain down hell, not so good in anything else) and Scepter/Focus (worked extremely well, still use it). The utilities i took were kinda me not knowing what to take so i just took Arcane Power, Arcane Shield, and Mist Form, my elite was Tornado because that’s actually a strong elite in PvP if you know how to use it, and the heal was Ether Renewal because, i mean cmon, it’s Ether Renewal.

LightningBlaze.4913:

From previous mmo experiences I have learnt you have to specialize in one main area as a start to be great at pve and pvp.. Whether that is dps/burst/heals or tank is up to the player to decide.. Being hybrid in all areas won’t take you too far specially when facing against a player that does focus on one of these attributes. in Gw2, I find it best to concentrate from two to three main attributes while the rest to be moderate and low in value. For example my Ele is high in power, precision and critical damage, moderate in Hp and armor and mediocre at the rest. My main area of focus is BURST.

This actually false. It’s a matter of whether the build can do both at the same time, or if it can do both, but only one at a time. If it’s both at the same time, it will work, if it’s one or the other, it will fail. Being able to do both at the same time is fairly rare though, but it’s more common in MMOs that either have instant activation/multipurpose skills. Diminishing returns on speccing into one attribute (not present) and weird aggro system (present) also helps since a high def+ healer always has synergy.

Without considering traits or the back piece, +all stat is ok for Eles. The only problem I see is that you trade some short term stats for long term stats (power vs condition damage) and (tanky stats versus heal from healing power). This stat set would do find but I find that it is a bit low on the power side and there isn’t anything good in the fire trait line atm so it is pointless try to acquire more power from the trait line.