Guild Wars 2

Hi Guys, I’ve returned after stopping a month or so after HoT launch and before that played off and on for a while so my knowledge has some heavy gaps due to meta shifts etc. and I’m just looking for clarification on PvP builds and how they work.

So my question(s) are more around why certain builds in PvP for the elementalist dont work such as going full glass cannon, is it the cool downs? The general stat weights for us? etc.

And why something like this wouldnt work, and what thought process you would generally go through to try and make it work.

The idea behind the build above is obviously around abusing people while they are knocked down which you have access to 2 of with d/d, with Air talent Tempest Defense for 20% damage on knocked down foes, and sigil of impact for 10% damage on knocked down foes (not sure if that translates to 30%), then stat stacking power ferocity for a big fire grab as Sigil of Intelligence gives you 100% crit on weapon swap (in this case attunement swap to fire).

And relying on the random amounts of burning you’ll naturally do as supplement damage, that I imagine would also kick in when they are knocked down giving people random spikes of damage.

I wasnt sure what amulet to take as it looks like they’ve removed celestial, but the paladins one looks like it covers what I envisioned

So yeah, any comments to help guide the thought process, and the minimum requirements to do things in pvp (base toughness/health), and any criticism of the build. Full disclosure, I havent tested it, literally just at work bored and decided to play around with the calculator to get familiar with talents again.

When it comes to pvp builds for ele, the number #1 concern (as it has always been) is survivability.

Eles have very low natural tankiness (lowest HP and toughness), and very few skills that provide hard damage mitigation (evades, blocks, invulns, or even stealth). This means you need to be worried about both condis (low HP) AND power damage (esp. spikes). Many other classes have both better natural tankiness, and more abilities that give them hard damage reduction. On top of this, on weapons like staff and daggers, every skill has an incredibly large tell. Burning speed can hit hard on a dps build, but anybody decent can see it coming from a mile away. Good luck landing firegrab. Lava font can be just strafed out of taking 0 ticks of damage, etc. Finally, on the negative side, eles are range-locked after picking their weapon sets. As soon as you equip a dagger, you are 100% melee (and don’t think conjures can fix this for you), meaning you are going to have to somehow survive a LOT or aoe/random damage if you want to deal any yourself.

What eles traditionally HAVE had to work with is: High healing (our heals aren’t super awesome base, but scale REALLY well with healing power), soft mitigation (lots of protection, as well as some hard+soft cc), the ability to trait for cleanses out the wazoo, and boons to make up for offensive deficits (might stacking, lots of fury). This is what the celestial build of old did: tanked most of your damage and had enough consistent cleanses/heals to just out-sustain enemies until it could build up tons of might and actually do damage.

Throughout all of ele existence, every working pvp build has basically been based on packing as much defense as possible in order to survive. If you aren’t taking max defense, or near-max defense, you become a free kill for anybody who focuses you, especially thieves (to a slightly lesser extent mesmers and more recently revenants) who have the ability to ignore your dodges and burst from stealth, and nearly (or actually) 100-0 with no recourse on your part. Without sufficient survivability, any match with a thief becomes 4v5 as they can EASILY farm you and then run through the map while you watch waiting for your respawn constantly. Thus, all-out damage is simply not a strategy that works.

With HoT, EVERYTHING has a tons of passive damage mitigation (blocks, invulns, evades) all over the place. To make things actually die, ANet has also upped the damage just about everything can do as well. This means, there is tons of random procs, aoes, condi bursts, and spikes that every throws around, that the old “spam sustain, stack might, win through attrition” strategy just doesn’t work. Too many builds (like warriors, engies, druids, and even modern mesmers, revs, and DH’s) have higher damage/sustain ratios, and you won’t be able to really touch them in 1v1s or even teamfights. Remember, your damage is easy to see coming, while they have tons of instant-cast and/or ranged damage and all kinds of ways to mitigate anything you do. You have comparatively few (and on a long CD) ways to mitigate what they want to do.

So then the final question is, are there any offensive ele builds? The answer is: kind of, but its like playing GW2 PvP:Tribulation Mode. You can play staff dps, but you better learn to kite your butt off. Even if not focused, again, the enemy team has so many ways to just ignore your damage while dishing tons out, you would be better off playing something else (like a necro, who can nuke way harder while surviving more).

The best option you HAVE for dps is scepter. It has good skills that are “unfair” enough, in that they are instant damage, to get around enemy defenses (phoenix is unblockable, air swaps and air 2 are instant, and that makes up most your damage). Even if you want to play scepter dps build, you still take 2 defensive trait lines to survive as well as possible, and still just do less for your team (in terms of damage/mobility/survivability) than another class in a similar role (thief, rev, even burst mes with portal). If you take scepter, the only reason you only take 2 defensive trait lines, is because fresh air (trait) is the only thing that makes the dps just decent. You don’t have great sustained damage, but if you line up your burst, you can quickly take out squishy targets. You also load up your utilities with as much survivability as possible.

Just some thoughts for you.

This was the kind of post I was hoping for so thank you for the run down.

From what you’ve told me it sounds like anet really needs to take a step back and slow down the pvp in terms of random spam, and lots of procs etc for condition damage/boons.

Also from what you say about elementalists having lots of tells thats a very good point and I’d rather see other classes get longer animations/more tells than to have eles get quicker animations/fewer tells.

What you say about the “good luck getting a fire grab” that was the reasoning behind playing around updraft and earthquake. And I believe to some extend you can get very sneaky updrafts/earthquakes using lightning flash mid animation (not sure if this still exists, god i hope so).

And your point about thief being able to 100-0 someone, ive experienced that, even with the auramancer build i saw on metabattle. To me that doesnt really signify that eles are in a bad spot, but more thief is overtuned so its hard, imo, to use that as an example. The lack of counterplay through 1shots and even 1shots through stealth can only mean its not even remotely balanced and therefore shouldnt be treated as the norm in that context.

And just another question. So right now theres no way to go full into DPS specializations and make up for the lack of survive via weapon skills in amulet and runes?

First off, thief cannot one shot anyone these days. The reason they seem strong is because of their ability to spam skills. The passives and blocks actually make it hard for thief to stand out in the meta so many resort to spamming staff 5.

Scepter build is the closest we have to good dps since it utilizes a lot of active (earth 5, final shielding, arcane shield, one with air) however it is not as mobile out of combat as thief or revenant and does not do reliable burst damage. Its saving grace is its pretty fun to play and alot of the damage is hard to dodge since its instant cast.

Your build won’t work because it has no active defence or passive defence that will last long enough for you to sustain a fight since d/x is typically a bruiser style of play.

FrownyClown.8402:

First off, thief cannot one shot anyone these days. The reason they seem strong is because of their ability to spam skills. The passives and blocks actually make it hard for thief to stand out in the meta so many resort to spamming staff 5.

Scepter build is the closest we have to good dps since it utilizes a lot of active (earth 5, final shielding, arcane shield, one with air) however it is not as mobile out of combat as thief or revenant and does not do reliable burst damage. Its saving grace is its pretty fun to play and alot of the damage is hard to dodge since its instant cast.

Your build won’t work because it has no active defence or passive defence that will last long enough for you to sustain a fight since d/x is typically a bruiser style of play.

Purely out of curiosity, is thief not perceived as a top tier pick in NA? (deducing you’re NA from the staff comment)

Thief to me, and I believe many others on the EU region is one of the absolute strongest picks at the moment. Just based off its insane mobility and +1 with steal and pulm.

Gokil.2543:

FrownyClown.8402:

First off, thief cannot one shot anyone these days. The reason they seem strong is because of their ability to spam skills. The passives and blocks actually make it hard for thief to stand out in the meta so many resort to spamming staff 5.

Scepter build is the closest we have to good dps since it utilizes a lot of active (earth 5, final shielding, arcane shield, one with air) however it is not as mobile out of combat as thief or revenant and does not do reliable burst damage. Its saving grace is its pretty fun to play and alot of the damage is hard to dodge since its instant cast.

Your build won’t work because it has no active defence or passive defence that will last long enough for you to sustain a fight since d/x is typically a bruiser style of play.

Purely out of curiosity, is thief not perceived as a top tier pick in NA? (deducing you’re NA from the staff comment)

Thief to me, and I believe many others on the EU region is one of the absolute strongest picks at the moment. Just based off its insane mobility and +1 with steal and pulm.

You could be right. I haven’t played too much so havent met a good thief in awhile. The reason I said that is I haven’t seen too many d/p thieves and the most likely cause is things like DH who can block for a long time and drop traps. This is from a lower tier perspective since I don’t play much.

FrownyClown.8402:

First off, thief cannot one shot anyone these days. The reason they seem strong is because of their ability to spam skills. The passives and blocks actually make it hard for thief to stand out in the meta so many resort to spamming staff 5.

Vault spam thief is almost a bruiser build that is great against “res teams” that have engies, druids, etc (that can get quick resses), but I am fairly certain that d/p thief would 1-shot the build that was posted here, esp with a dps amulet (zerker or marauder). Thing is, nobody sane plays a build that a thief truly can 1-shot – they are just instantly unviable. Maybe you’d get 2-shot if you took demolisher’s or paladin amulet, but you won’t pressure a thief enough to win a single fight or even effectively defend yourself.

Also, d/p thief is better against teams that lack mobility and have good burst targets (necros, druids, revs, eles) but not many tanky builds that are dangerous to you. With unhindered combatant (450 range dodge, removes immob/cripple/chill, gives swiftness and 10% damage reduction) and proper utilities, you have insane map pressure with +1’s and decap, combined with high damage from steal-backstab-pulm impact strike.