Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I’ve been musing a new build in my head and would like to get the communities thoughts on this build, i.e., whether more experienced Ele’s than I think it would work, not work, and if so, why. I’m focusing primarily on sPvP here and the occasional WvW roaming (we all know that staff is good with AOE’s for keep siege/defense).

Anyway, the build is an anti-CC, high mobility, dual dagger build with 3 cantrip abilities.

Trait point allocations are as follows:
1.) 30 pts into arcane with Elemental Attunement (V), Windborne Dagger (IX, for 15% speed increase), and Evasive Arcana (XI, for extra damage and blast finishers).
2.) 20 pts into Water for added vitality and Cleansing Wave (V) and Cantrips Mastery (IX, 20% cooldown reduction on cantrips).
3.) 15 to 20 pts in Earth for toughness and condition dmg, Earth’s Embrace (III, earth armor at 50% health), and if choosing 20 pts in Earth, then Geomancers Freedom (IX, 33% reduction on CC duration).
4.) If I choose to put only 15 in earth, the last 5 pts would be into Air for 10% speed increase provided that this 10% speed increase stacks with the 15% speed increase from Windborne Dagger (can someone answer if these stack?) for an effective 125% run speed in air.

Skills:
1.) Glyph of Elemental Harmony for healing, Mist form (60s reduced cooldown), Cleansing Fire (40s reduced cooldown), Lightning Flash (36s reduced cooldown), and Tornado as my elite (mostly for the blowout and 15s of stability)

Perks of the build (imo):

1.) In this build you have a multitude of escape abilities and condition removal (e.g., cleansing fire, cleansing wave when attuning to water, cleansing wave when IN water, mist form to remove cripples/chills/etc., lightning flash to get away, possibly geomancer’s freedom, etc., etc.). I feel like this build would be VERY hard to lockdown and subsequently bursted on.
2.) I like using lightning flash offensively with churning earth. One can start churning earth cast, teleport to the enemy at the last second preventing them from dodging it, knock them down with earthquake (use Ring of Earth and Impale to stack more bleeds), then dodge roll when they get up to set off a 2nd churning earth from Evasive Arcana. Switch to Air attunement, ride the lightning —> updraft, then move on to the typical fire combo (e.g., burning speed, ring of fire, Fire grab, etc.). Dodge roll again to set off flame burst, hit cleansing fire to add more burn and clear any conditions, then pop mist form and get the hell outta there. This leaves the enemy with a TON of bleed stacks and a long burning duration as you float away scot-free in a vapory-misty-miasma
3.) If you find yourself surrounded, pop Tornado to blowout the enemies and gain stability (so you can’t be CC’d again) and then get the hell outta there!
4.) I know this build suffers from poor direct damage, but the general idea is condition stacking coupled with being very hard to hit yourself. Basically being a PITA.

Anywho, that’s the gist of the build. Feel free to call me an idiot or otherwise tell me why this build is worthless. I hadn’t seen anyone else propose such a build, so I felt the need to share and gather opinions.

TL:DR version: Come on people, read my post. We’re all adults here (well most of us are, anyway), one should be able to read 500 some-odd words without our eyes glazing over…

for personal preference i would go with sceptre main hand, higher bleed stacked from the first skill with added range. you are also capable of doing everything you mentioned as you didn’t specifically state a skill you would use on main hand

don’t use tornado. don’t. you’re a slow moving, easy to hit from range target, and you won’t hit for much damage since you didn’t spec towards direct damage. you can also be turned into a moa during the transformation. get the elemental instead

I asked the question about speed stuff stacking and also did a little testing myself and as far as I know, only the fastest speed buff matters. If you take Windborne Dagger, then the 5 points in Air is useless because you still only go 115% speed. If you take the air trait that gives you up to 25% speed after spending time in air, then you just get 125% and nothing more. Swiftness does 33% but that doesn’t stack with the 125% so your total speed with swiftness is still just 133%.

SilverUniverse.7103:

for personal preference i would go with sceptre main hand, higher bleed stacked from the first skill with added range. you are also capable of doing everything you mentioned as you didn’t specifically state a skill you would use on main hand

don’t use tornado. don’t. you’re a slow moving, easy to hit from range target, and you won’t hit for much damage since you didn’t spec towards direct damage. you can also be turned into a moa during the transformation. get the elemental instead

Good point on Sceptre, i’ll have to consider it, however I really really like Burning speed w/ the dagger mainhand, and although the bleed is better w/ the sceptre (i.e., stone shards) I find it harder to get a lot of stone shards auto-attacks off and sorta prefer ring of earth/impale to get two quick bleeds up while they’re knocked down. Also, windborne dagger only works with the mainhand, and I like the 15% passive speed buff for everyday kiting. Rock barrier is nice however, so i’ll consider it.

Regarding the tornado, yeah, it’s pretty bad, but I find my elementals just get dropped fast too and really don’t contribute much to the fight. Ele really doesn’t have a worthwhile Elite skill imo, it’s a shame.

Aerian.2751:

I asked the question about speed stuff stacking and also did a little testing myself and as far as I know, only the fastest speed buff matters. If you take Windborne Dagger, then the 5 points in Air is useless because you still only go 115% speed. If you take the air trait that gives you up to 25% speed after spending time in air, then you just get 125% and nothing more. Swiftness does 33% but that doesn’t stack with the 125% so your total speed with swiftness is still just 133%.

Good to know, so I’ll skip the 5 pts in air and probably dump them into earth for added toughness, condition dmg, and geomancer’s freedom or serrated stones (since the goal is to bleed stack). Serrated stones might be preferable since I have so many condition cleansers, the reduced CC time won’t be as useful (but 20% extra bleed duration is a lot of extra dmg potentially).

Lets see…

- Wouldn’t take 30points in arcana. You haven’t got releavant combo fields with d/d (only fire), so you don’t really need the extra blast finishers. Also I don’t think you need 15% speed with dagger, since you will have a high swiftness uptime. If you move the points to air you get 10% speed instead, that means 5% less than with arcane, but imo precision and critdmg is better than boonduration and attunement recharge when running d/d
- I’d get at least 10points in Air (Auras grant fury+swiftness or shorter cd on heal… both really strong traits for d/d)
- I also like 30points in Water with tripple cantrips. You can trait shorter cantrip cd + cantrips give vigor and regen + regen removes conditions. That adds an additional conditionremove to all your cantrips + extra heal + vigor… pretty strong imo.

Also cantrip mastery doesn’t work for mistform, its bugged for some reason and still goes on full cd :/

Also cantrip mastery doesn’t work for mistform, its bugged for some reason and still goes on full cd :/

well that blows. Although this HAS to be a bug and will get fixed eventually, hopefully soon.

Thanks for the feedback otherwise, 30 pts in water is intriguing for condition clears on regen, which trigger on all cantrips and on attuning to water. That gives a lot of clear/regen procs, possibly too many to pass up.

Although I love evasive arcana, not necessarily because of the blast finishers but moreso due to the free extra dmg on all your dodge rolls. Churning Earth —> dodge roll (w/ churning earth) is a LOT of bleeding