Guild Wars 2

Hello I’m needing some help in putting together a D/D build for WvW and I’v decided to come here, to some of the forum experts as I feel like I’v hit a roadblock. Basically what I’m trying to achieve is something that is semi-roamer that can do good DPS without sacrificing defense.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmmbyR4gjDAkHuADLiCPUekzM2A-j0DBYgAYjgkIAUBgJfFRjtMMsVXRr8KIabYKXAaXRVFLxWzZ1cOQG0JWGA9xA-w

This is the build I’v been running with some personal variations. I feel that I’m vulnerable to damage so my gear is Knights with boon duration runes and Knights weapons. My trinks are berserker because I feel like I’m doing crap damage to people. Even with these changes I honestly don’t see much return and at all. Its a rarity really for me to do enough pressure to someone to down them. I can sorta stay alive against most builds I guess? But I can’t ever turn the tables and its kinda frustrating.

Generally what I do is I wander around in water for the regen incase someone I meet tries to open on me with conditions so I can cleanse them fast and start my opener.

My opener consists of Air>>>RTL>>>Updraft>>>Fire>>>Burning Speed>>>RoF>>>FG>>>Earth>>>Magnetic Grasp>>>Earthquake>>>RoE>>>CE

Then I go to water to wait for CDs and to heal off any damage or conditions.

The opener looks pretty cool and flows well on test dummys but not so much on players. I feel that a decent portion of them get away before I can finish my opener so it screws everything up. Also it seems like a lot of my skills don’t even land especially CE with its ridiculous cast-time. Even in the off chance that I manage to get them all landed on a player it don’t really feel like I’v dented them and it either turns into a tie fight or I just get smashed.

Builds I have trouble with are….
Mesmer(Unless they are tanky then they can’t kill me at all but then I can’t kill them.)
Thief(I just can’t seem to counter them. The constant stealthing in and out resetting feels so broken to me. Like I can’t ever get the chance to lock them down cause they’ll always 2 shot me or some stupid crap like that.)
Tanky Enginner
Most Berserkers

I’v sat down and looked at the trait trees and I feel…..stuck….like I’m forced into certain ones like Arcane and Water. I honestly have no idea what to do at this point cause I feel like I’m punished for experimentation. Any help with a D/D build would be nice. I know its a high skill cap and I’v played it for months always practicing trying to make myself better but I feel there is just something thats keeping me from doing that pressure that I see other D/D eles on youtube and in game put out and yet still survive.

Thanks in advance and if you need more information let me know.

Your build is good, but I would personally add just a little bit of toughness (~100).

In my opinion, a 30 water 30 arcane build with about 500 healing power benefits a lot more from signet of restoration than it does from ether renewal. You say you have trouble against bursty classes, and this is exactly why. Heavily offensive builds can take advantage of the enormous channel time of ether renewal, and easily outdamage the heal it provides during the channel. Signet however increases your pressure by a LOT, and against bursty classes, offense is the best defense. On top of that it has amazing scaling with healing power. I would advise taking cleansing wave in the water tree master tier if you switch to SoR.

Seems like you have a little trouble with the playstyle however. Generally speaking, you want to leave water attunement as fast as possible, so you can get the condi cleanse+regeneration+1800 heal back up as fast as possible. Same goes for earth, since that will drastically improve your protection uptime. I don’t mean you should leave it immediately, but just get into the mindset of leaving as soon as you can. Air and fire are the best attunements to stay in, air because air autoattack is the best out of the 4, and fire because landing your fire cooldowns is extremely important.

As a D/D ele you have to focus on pressuring your opponent so they can’t freecast on you. That’s why signet will help you a lot. Try to get as much healing per second out of your water attunement (dodge+swap to water mid dodge+use cone of cold+immediately swap away, use cleansing wave and frost aura when they’re off cd).

TL;DR: Try signet of restoration, don’t stay in water attunement too long but rather as short as possible for maximum heal per second, offense is the best defense, a thief won’t come and burst you if he’s almost dead, giving you a window to heal back up.

As for other builds: 0/20/0/20/30 and 0/15/10/15/30 work a bit better for roaming imo. You have to use ether renewal on these though.

No FGS or LH? Just curious. I’m only lvl 35 but they seem pretty friggin’ powerful.

Use them for leveling up but don’t rely on them in WvW/pvp.

Gokil.2543:

I would advise taking cleansing wave in the water tree master tier if you switch to SoR.

Doesn’t Soothing Wave cleanse conditions more frequently in combination with the Grandmaster trait? Since you’ll probably get hit by crits quite frequently if people apply conditions to you, and every time you get regeneration and a condition removed. Compared to one single condition cleanse every time you switch to water, that seems like a much better choice. Or did I miss something?

Soothing wave has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds, so it’s roughly the same

Personally I feel your pain. IMO you can increase your skill a lot at playing, hoping that some changes will come and you’ll be a bit more powerful. As you mentioned, there’s just no way to get anything close to real damage (comparatively speaking), while still having a decent chance of staying alive. The gap closes more as you get full Ascended gear, but I personally feel we should be more viable in lesser gear without spending 100s of gold just to find out how effective we can be at the top. Ele is my most expensive character because I end up changing runes and builds so much hoping to find something a little better.

Your build is good as mentioned, it’s similar to the one I often run as D/D. Just change things around slightly to compare other builds, but overall it’s the base of what I find most effective in WvW.

If it’s a 1v1, GoE will help you a lot, but otherwise I feel FGS is a better all-around WvW elite (you can always swap out if you go into a 1v1 that’s in a secluded place where you don’t expect to be interrupted). FGS helps you with escape if a group is chasing, and it can lay down some damage against groups and thieves (I find it can really surprise many thieves and down them even after stealth if you don’t just stand still where they vanished), especially if they have someone else to focus on or have turned their targets right after you mist form or armor of earth up.

I would also advise you break your combo down a bit more, don’t just try to go through the whole thing in a fight, a lot can happen and you should adapt on the fly. Don’t feel like you have to be combo’ing the entire fight, you need to lay down a burst string, get someone to use their heal while you keep constant pressure on them. Eventually with enough time you can wear them down, but you will never have the burst to take someone out before they can react so they’ll have a chance to use pretty much everything they have against you. The more you can anticipate what a class will do and counter it, the better you should do in fights.

Gokil.2543:

Soothing wave has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds, so it’s roughly the same

Hm, that’s right. So theoretically, both have their pros and cons. Soothing Wave can remove conditions without you needing to change to water. However, if you fight a condition build who uses full carrion or full dire, it becomes kinda useless. Cleansing Wave on the other hand is more reliable here, but it requires you to set water attunement on cooldown if you maybe just want to cleanse an immobilize, cripple or chill, or even poison without actually having a need for healing (yet).

Overall it seems like Cleansing Wave is the better choice. Though… that little bit of extra-regeneration sure wouldn’t hurt.

Oh, and also thanks for that hint considering aggressive play. I mean, I never really camped water myself, though it feels a bit tempting to spam the autoattack to get the healing from the signet and the automatic regeneration. But obviously, you are right with what you’ve said haha. I actually noticed this when I just tried to solo the two troll champions in Caledon forest today (and actually made it). It really helps a lot to just cast what you need/can cast in water, cast number 2 the last and immediately switch to something else. Even on lvl 36 with subpar equipment getting downscaled haha. I feel like my understanding of the D/D-ele has grown a fair bit.

@OP: Most of what I’ll say was already said in some way, but I’ll add my point of view anyway (bear in mind that I’m not an expert, though). Using Updraft as an opener isn’t something I personally would do, as I see it more like an “oh sh…”-button and gap-creator. Also, if you run around in water, you can actually cleanse less conditions than when you run around in another attunement, since you can already get some cleansing just by switching to water. I’d suggest running around in air (you also have 10% increased movement-speed and access to swiftness with an aura there since you go 10 points into the air-traitline), then switch to water if you need to cleanse right away and from there to fire, or switch to fire directly to set up the first burst (usually Burning Speed I guess, followed by what’s possible in the given situation). To be honest, it kinda surprises me that you’re listing such a long opener. You’ve leveled your Elementalist to 80 in PvE… did that really always work just like that? I myself often find that I have to adapt many times during the fight, and my Ele is only lvl 37 by now. I can intend to do some things and sometimes I can also do those things, but quite often I also need to change my plans on the fly. I can just guess that you’re newer to the game than I am, thus I’ve got a little advantage there.
I suggest you try to solo some of the easier champions and work your way up. I’m sure you’ll learn to adapt fast, and not rely too much on written-in-stone rotations.

I joined the game 3 days after launch and ele was the first class I decided to stick with. I had no complaints with D/D back then but after coming back from break it feels so different. And yea the opener if you can call it that is generally what I’v tried to lock people down on. And no I lvled her with D/F and around 60 I wen’t D/D but this was a long long time ago. Yesterday I’v switched to a build that uses DS. My only gripes are lack of vitality to make DS more useful and lack of pressure on people. I feel the builds a step in the right direction but I need to tweak something. I’v been told celestial set is good to invest in so I’m going for it. I can see how it would give me a nice balance I need. Sucks I have to go through a crazy crafting journey to get to it tho.

Sadly With Eles, the build and gear are not as important as your playing skill. I think your build is already good for what you are trying to do, there’s no real way to “have your cake and eat it too” with Eles and have that good damage and good survivability other classes enjoy.

At this point, my advice is to keep practicing with your build until it “clicks.” Once it does, you’ll be taking names.

I run practically the same gear as you. I just have a little more armor but 5% less crit damage.

Some tips that may help:

Don’t stick to a set rotation if you can help it. Instead think about what you need to do and use it when you need it.

Some ways to burst people effectively though. Use Burning Speed through someone, so that the explosion is just behind them. Immediately turn around and try to land Fire Grab. If both hits land and crit, that’s easily 10k damage on a medium armored target. Ring of Fire afterward will punish them for trying to get away (5s of burn) and you can grab them with Magnetic Grasp followed by Earthquake and Ring of Earth.

Churning Earth shouldn’t be used all that much unless you plan to do it at range before using LF to jump onto a group.

I’ve found myself using LF into Updraft as my standard initiation combo. An instant blink into a blowout catches a LOT of people offguard.

For thieves, make them blow cooldowns as they try to kill you. Attune to earth to reduce their burst then start healing up. When they chase you and burn utilities, turn on them with Burning Speed, Earthquake, Ring of Earth, then Frozen Burst. Result is either a dead thief, or one who is burning, crippled, chilled, and bleeding. Also if they stealth up, wait a few seconds then pop Shocking Aura. Counters backstab thieves very well.

You can try something more like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmabyx4wjDAjHi0xIiCPUekzM2A-jEDBofAYjgkIAEBgJfFRjtMMsVXRr8KIqaAKbYqXLq2auIa1SBExEA-w

I run healing signet instead of ether renew, but that is just personal preference. Less damage, but a lot more survivability. The loss of group condi removal is offset by frequent group stability.

I currently play this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImObyx5wjDAEFuYiQxDWUekzM2A-j0CBYfBkEBgIAM5rIaslhhtMKIVXRTVbR16aYqXAWzFRrWKgImAA-w

Its quite good 1VS1 despite i can t kill ANY PU mesmer and i struggle a lot against engi…..

Rather than rtl updraft i prefer magnetic leap or burning speed…before updraft or even lightning flash.