Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, Ele was my first char that I made & lvl’ed to 80 but I rerolled to warrior which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Anyway to this point I have always run with staff and I have tried various builds and armors on my ele but found nothing very attractive. I ran full rampager/earth condition build, a mix breed and even full berserker too but right now I am gearing my ele into full celestial.

I already have her equipped in all 6 pieces of celestial armor and both ascended celestial rings that I had sitting in my bank. Also I have already made 1 dagger and got enough mats for making another so I was thinking should I go another dagger for D/D build or make a scepter?

Before anyone asks or suggests something, lemme say I NEVER DO ANY PVP/WvW, the only time I do any wvw is to complete my monthly and then I get the hell out asap. I am thinking of going 6 superior rune of the traveler for armor (divinity is just too much gold for a character that I hardly play more then gathering nodes or few dungeons a month).

Suggestions or even trait build are welcome.

celestial is one of the worst sets you can have. In low level dungs (up to 50) where critDmg scales bad and condi dmg is quite hight even Rampager is better than celestial. In hi level dungs the only advantage of celestial over rampager is quite nice critDmg but your prec is to low to make full use of it. Generally I am still (since 2-3 weeks) testing full celestial but so far it gives nothing, survivability (especially tou) is weak, power/prec are weak.
If you want to have only one set for your ele and want to test various builds/playstyles then go for it but remember that you can make a lot better builds using 3 stats gear or mix of 3 stats gear.
In pve the way to go is power/prec/critDmg for dmg builds or Vit/Tou for survivability. Cond dmg and healing power are not needed and any investment in those will make you weaker – celestial is a set that gives this 2 but takes the important stats.
Overall even if you want to play different builds/playstyles I would still recommend
Armour – Ptv
Weapons, accesories, backpack – Ber
Rings – Tou/Power/CritDmg
This will be much better for experiments with the class than celestial gear.

Well I already have a full berserker warrior in max ascended and guard in soldiers/cleric mixed. Basically I have 4 80’s rightnow and they are geared:
Warrior: Full berserker (DPS)
Guard: Soldiers/Cleric (Bunker)
Ranger: Rampager (Condition heavy)
Ele: Celestial

The point here is that elementalist is perhaps the best jack of all trades skill wise so I am also gearing her in similar armor, I do like to play my ele but I don’t bring it for serious play like high level fractals or anything.

Anyway you didn’t answer my main question, what you suggest for weapon choice? D/D or S/D?

Pridedemon.3041:

Well I already have a full berserker warrior in max ascended and guard in soldiers/cleric mixed. Basically I have 4 80’s rightnow and they are geared:
Warrior: Full berserker (DPS)
Guard: Soldiers/Cleric (Bunker)
Ranger: Rampager (Condition heavy)
Ele: Celestial

The point here is that elementalist is perhaps the best jack of all trades skill wise so I am also gearing her in similar armor, I do like to play my ele but I don’t bring it for serious play like high level fractals or anything.

Anyway you didn’t answer my main question, what you suggest for weapon choice? D/D or S/D?

Aa for me I have 5 different full sets for my ele, 2 for thief (ber and condi/tou), 1 for warr (pure ber). Mesmer is in a process to get gear but I think I will quite this game soon so proably I will not finish gearing my mesmer.

>The point here is that elementalist is perhaps the best
> jack of all trades skill wise

this is how anet sees ele but in real life – you are average/bad at everything

>so I am also gearing her in similar armor,

celestial is again average/bad at everything so mixing ele with celestial….yes… its not going to end well

Compared to warrior ele has -800 vit and -300 tou so overal ele has -1100 stats points. To compensate this warrior gets overall better skills on lower cooldowns and better traits ;D

>Anyway you didn’t answer my main question,
>what you suggest for weapon choice? D/D or S/D?

if you dont want to play seriously with your ele (like fractals 48+, soloing dungs etc.) then d/d. For fractals and “advanced” gameplay focus and scepter are must have weapons.

Lavadiel.6231:

>The point here is that elementalist is perhaps the best
> jack of all trades skill wise

this is how anet sees ele but in real life – you are average/bad at everything

>so I am also gearing her in similar armor,

celestial is again average/bad at everything so mixing ele with celestial….yes… its not going to end well

Compared to warrior ele has -800 vit and -300 tou so overal ele has -1100 stats points. To compensate this warrior gets overall better skills on lower cooldowns and better traits ;D

From what I understand ele’s are geared a lot more towards pvp because they have far more utility and survivability skills then warrior. Coming from WoW who main’ed a mage over 5 years since Burning Crusade I thought elementalist will be similar to a mage being the best dps and it turned out wrong. And because I never do pvp to which ele’s are more geared to I rerolled warrior.
Anyway thanks for asking my questions, peace out.

Celestial is far from being the “worst sets you can have.” Before committing to something, I’d suggest scouring the forums for a few more threads/posts. There are quite a few Elementalist experts on deck, at least enough to give you a better shot at fine tuning your preferences. Daphoenix and Neko are just a few that come to mind.

Good luck!

SalvinValkyries.4501:

Celestial is far from being the “worst sets you can have.”

mayby it is not the worst but one of the worst sets you can have, comparable to rampager. Btw. any good player will use pure berserker or almost pure ber in all pve content anyway. Using pure ber or ber/pvt mix I was abble to solo most of the dungs (that are possible to solo), solo 99% of the open world champions in game and easy play in fractals 48+. Using celestial gear will make that mayby not impossible at all but definitely harder and longer, for example solo Lupi in celestial as an ele will take 30+ min and “only” ~15 in ber.
Celestial is definietly not recommended for advanced players/playstyle, and for beginers ptv is way way easier to play.

SalvinValkyries.4501:

Celestial is far from being the “worst sets you can have.” Before committing to something, I’d suggest scouring the forums for a few more threads/posts. There are quite a few Elementalist experts on deck, at least enough to give you a better shot at fine tuning your preferences. Daphoenix and Neko are just a few that come to mind.

Good luck!

Daphoenix’s recommendation with celestial is for WvW, not what the OP is asking for.
In Neko’s guide, he recommends zerker gear like the rest of the dungeon community.

In dungeons/fractals you should really get used to using full zerker’s so you’re not a liability to the team, most would also tell you to forgo PVT altogether so you don’t develop bad habits and learn faster if you jump right into zerker gear. Despite what people may say, in normal dungeons as long as you are dodging the major hits. In open world, you can simply tag things with auto-attack and gear doesn’t matter as long as you’re in a party. Full zerker’s + Dagger Mainhand’s Lightning Whip is your best bet at tagging mobs if zerging pve events solo.

zencow.3651:

SalvinValkyries.4501:

Celestial is far from being the “worst sets you can have.” Before committing to something, I’d suggest scouring the forums for a few more threads/posts. There are quite a few Elementalist experts on deck, at least enough to give you a better shot at fine tuning your preferences. Daphoenix and Neko are just a few that come to mind.

Good luck!

Daphoenix’s recommendation with celestial is for WvW, not what the OP is asking for.
In Neko’s guide, he recommends zerker gear like the rest of the dungeon community.

In dungeons/fractals you should really get used to using full zerker’s so you’re not a liability to the team, most would also tell you to forgo PVT altogether so you don’t develop bad habits and learn faster if you jump right into zerker gear. Despite what people may say, in normal dungeons as long as you are dodging the major hits. In open world, you can simply tag things with auto-attack and gear doesn’t matter as long as you’re in a party. Full zerker’s + Dagger Mainhand’s Lightning Whip is your best bet at tagging mobs if zerging pve events solo.

Wild assumptions on my build and/or style of play aside, it comes down to balancing for group compositions and personal preferences. More importantly, however, I’ve found that a balanced build is generally more suited to my style of play. Speaking of liabilities, a player is also a liability if he/she is spending half of their time in a downed state.

As for Daphoenix’s builds, you may to want to check his website. He does not single out WvW as the only place for Celestial stats. At last glance, his optimal builds for both WvW and PvE revolve around celestial builds. Unless of course he is secretly lying to us about his calculations and his builds. Not impossible but unlikely.

Note the differences between Neko’s and Daphoenix’s builds. Two knowledgeable players with uniquely different solutions. Does that make one better than the other? I don’t believe so. Those differences denote a varied approach to the same problem. Simply put, save but a few standard staples, they have tailored their traits/gear according to their likes and dislikes.

On a side note, if there was PvE content that unequivocally demanded min-maxing to the nth degree, I might understand the fetish for Berserkers. That may happen when and if raiding is introduced. That’s a topic for another day, however.

To check how good celestial is do a simple test:
Put full PTV and compare damage and survivability VS celestial. Notice small difference in damage and huge in survivability.
Now put full berserker on and compare VS celestial. This time damage difference is mega huge and survivability difference not so big.
Now try mixing ber/ptv – to get “dmg/sur balance” and see how much more important stats you get using 3 stats gear.

I dont say that celestial is unplayable in pve cuz obviously u can play with it with success and indeed proably ele is the best profesion that can use the full potential of celestial gear. But celestial is not the gear to get full potential of ele.

Celestial trinkets are decent for filling in gaps of whatever your build is missing a little bit of, but the armor isn’t so great. I just can’t see a reason to use it over something else that focuses on some of the more important stats. Unless they buff it by like 10- 20% atleast, I doubt i’ll ever use it. There are just way better options.

By no mean am I an expert with the elementalis. But I came up with this http://tinyurl.com/o9u9vb6 set up traits and what not can be easily switched around to fit what you like but it has a mix of celestial and zerker’s gear not sure how well it does as my ele is only level 40 but I think it would work well for dungeons and open world.

SalvinValkyries.4501:

Speaking of liabilities, a player is also a liability if he/she is spending half of their time in a downed state.

As for Daphoenix’s builds, you may to want to check his website. He does not single out WvW as the only place for Celestial stats. At last glance, his optimal builds for both WvW and PvE revolve around celestial builds. Unless of course he is secretly lying to us about his calculations and his builds. Not impossible but unlikely.

For getting downed, that’s entirely a L2P issue. A player is more of a liability if he stays alive yet does negligible amount of damage than if he gets downed occasionally then rallies since the target dies quickly after.

He is not lying, he just generalizes PvE as easy and like most WvWers deem PvE content can be done with WvW builds. True in a way but it’s far from optimal. No one runs Lemon Grass in PvE. And afaik, he doesn’t run dungeons/have as much as Neko in that department.

As far as I’m concerned, when people are asking for builds, they are asking for the optimal. You could finish dungeons in 1-2 hours all you want and debate whether that makes you skillful or a liability or not, but that could be done with any build. It’s much more time efficient to have a preference for the optimal build especially with the increased demands in grinding asked of us by Anet.

Scepter/Dagger key combinations for stacking might.
F2—> 2—> F1—> 4—> 2—> 3—> F4—> 4
Then you can burst down your enemy.
F3—> 2—> 3—> 4—> 5
Afterwards your fire attunement should be off cooldown and you can stack some more might.

For the purposes of remotely challenging PvE content (dungeons, fractals), I would suggest full Berserker gear, and Dagger/X. Because this is an alt, don’t bother with the gimmicky Lightning Hammer build, and do something that highlights what makes the Ele fun like a Fresh Air DPS build with no hammer and Dagger/Focus (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-PvE-Build-Direct-Damage). If you want something survivable and don’t mind low damage, the 0/10/0/30/30 build is still fine.

To be honest, in the open world when tagging stuff in world events for daily chests, I run Sentinel’s Gear with Traveler Runes because the goal there is to tag stuff and stay alive. I guess you can go full Berserker while fighting The Shatterer or The Frozen Maw but honestly does it really matter? I’d rather have more vitality so I don’t die to the crystals that fall down while you’re running to the AFK spot or the tons of adds that spawn when trying to tag those portals. >.>

Anyway, as cool as Celestial Gear sounds in theory, it honestly doesn’t do as much as you’d hope, and I really do disagree with Daphoenix’s idea of using Celestial in a WvW build. And trust me, I have a full Celestial Trinket and Armor and Weapon set (it was the best Magic Find set before they got rid of Magic Find) for my Ele. Your Power is going to be really low and your health and armor will still be relatively low, and the compensations to Precision, Healing Power, Condition Damage, and Crit Damage really don’t make up for… well, the loss in survivability and damage. If you’re going for tanky DPS sorta stuff, we already have a lot of gear sets that do exactly that (Valkyrie, Cavaliers, Knights, and Soldiers). You’re certainly free to do a Celestial build but I warn you that in the rather long time I spent with it (along with various combinations to try to make it more effective such as a Celestial/Zerker mix) it just seemed to be suboptimal for everything other than as a good Magic Find set (which no longer works thanks to the removal of MF from gear).

Anyway, I like Dagger/X the best. Dagger/Dagger and Dagger/Focus are both quite good and I suggest you give them a try. The most important video, by far, is Zoose’s Guide to the D/D Ele: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX1OjClufdk This is the best guide out there for teaching how to “get” the Elementalist in its rapid rotations, so I certainly suggest watching that and trying something like that if you’re trying to find an enjoyable build for an Ele.

My general balanced approach for a guy that doesn’t care about super dungeon speed runs and just wants an Ele that’s generally enjoyable and laid back to play while roaming the open world with friends? An Aura-Sharing Elementalist with 0/10/0/30/30 with Soldier’s Armor and Berserker Trinkets with Air I, Water V VI XII, Arcana V VI XI, and the utilities of Signet of Restoration, Arcane Wave, Lightning Flash, Mist Form, and Fiery Greatsword.

Builds with easy access to 25 might are the only builds where celestial works well, and even then, don’t use full celestial, mix it in. Scepter/Dagger builds (except Fresh Air builds) are probably the only ones which easily take advantage of all celestial has to offer, I only use the most efficient pieces sprinkled in with zerker, and it’s my opinion that it works quite well.

If it matters, I run 30/0/0/20/20 with Fire VI/VII/XI, Water IV/VI usually, but I change that around sometimes, and Arcana is always V VI. Since I spend a fair bit of my time in Fire/Earth to stack might, and use healing skills from water on CD, and try to keep up Soothing Mist as much as possible, the condition damage/healing serves me well enough.