Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

I’ve decided that I wanted to re-roll a dagger/focus ele and I’ve spent some time playing around with the calculator. I’m very very newbish to the ele class and probably the build that I’m about to link below is beyond amusing for most of you, but I hope that you’d lend a helping hand with an opinion on what could be changed improved.

What I’m looking for is something as a hybrid between outgoing damage and boonhappy ele. I checked Zelyhn’s guide quite a few time, huge kudos to that, it helped me understand plenty of things but my build is a bit different than the one suggested by him.

Here’s what I managed to come up with: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAodnMISLDW4A+MAfEIwBwI9DG9BEHBCAdwiXhlAA-TxRBwAUOBAX3fooyvbqVsTVFU6BA8AAAA-e

I usually run dungeons and fractals with guildies so I’m not looking for maximizing my damage output rather, as I already said, I’d like to be able to dish out decent damage while granting my party as much boons as possible; looking for that fine line between both.

A few of the things on which I’m not certain of:

Utility skills:

Armor of Earth: The only reason I put it on the bar is because of the stability. I usually prefer to have the passive crit signet but I figured it’s not that much of a difference and sometimes stability is much more important than a few percentages more in critical strikes;

Traits:

Air, Bolt to the Heart: Not sure if I should swap this one of Zephyr’s Boon. As I said, I’m looking for more boons, while I have the feeling that Bolt to the Heart’s effect would be mostly notable on champs;

Water – Not sure if I should keep any points here at all; I’m in doubt if I should maximize my Arcana trait and get Evasive Arcana instead. What do you think?

I went for a combo of Knights and Berserkers gear, I play on an old rig and dodging is not always as easy as it seems so some bonus survivability is always welcome.

Thank you all in advance for taking your time to look into this!

I mean, if you want boons + damage, nothing beats a 30/30/10/0/0 scepter + (focus or dagger) + LH build. You can maintain 15-20 might and full fury by yourself while doing top tier DPS, and applying a decent amount of vuln. Since might/fury are basically the best boon in the game, if you want to be playing boons, might stacking is the way to go.

Anyway, d/f is decent at stacking might as well, but without 30 in fire for persisting flames, your boonsharing is going to be suboptimal.

There are several things I don’t like about your build. Fresh Air is mandatory for scepter builds and useful for builds which put no points into Arcana. You have a dagger build and points in Arcana, no reason to take Fresh Air.

What I dislike the most is taking is taking Shard of Ice when you already have so much vulnerabilty from Weak Spot.

I’ve run similar builds and know from experience that if you take points from air and put then in water to get Healing Ripple you build will be better.

Fresh Air has two main purposes. Increasing dps on Scepter builds and diminishing the negative impact of putting no points into Arcana. It can do other things but those are the main benefits.

MotherKitten.6795:

There are several things I don’t like about your build. Fresh Air is mandatory for scepter builds and useful for builds which put no points into Arcana. You have a dagger build and points in Arcana, no reason to take Fresh Air.

What I dislike the most is taking is taking Shard of Ice when you already have so much vulnerabilty from Weak Spot.

I’ve run similar builds and know from experience that if you take points from air and put then in water to get Healing Ripple you build will be better.

Fresh Air has two main purposes. Increasing dps on Scepter builds and diminishing the negative impact of putting no points into Arcana. It can do other things but those are the main benefits.

Fresh Air is the key trait to PvE D/F builds, so it is absolutely the right trait choice. Please read any of Zelhyn’s or DeKeyz threads in the stickies before you give bad advice. Healing ripple is also close to useless in PvE.

S/D Fresh Air is only applicable to PvP/WvW, which OP didn’t ask about.

Hi Maxi and Mother,

Thank you both for your feedback on the build; Maxi, do I necessarily have to go 30 in fire? I somehow really, really like the 20 points in Arcana. I will check your suggestion once I hit 80 and decide on which one to go with.

Mother, I agree with Maxi on the Air traits; AFAIK and as far as I tried it out, 1 in air attunement is a great auto-attack DPS skill. As for the Shard of Ice, I thought of grabbing Soothing Wave/Vital Striking, but I have the feeling that both won’t be really useful – first has CD of 10 seconds while the latter would be difficult to maintain for me as I’m playing with very low FPS and most of the time I miss my dodges.

Also, do you think it’d be viable to put 3 runes of the warrior/wurm for some extra survivability? I have the feeling that the current hp is just way too low for such a squishy character.

Thanks again, guys!

Hi Winter,

30 in fire is useful for the might stacks and fury, which is why I recommended it (you seemed to want boon support, and this is the best way to do that). 20 in Arcane is a rather defensive choice, especially with the traits you’ve chosen. This is somewhat selfish (not saying this in a negative way): your own survivability is better, but your contribution to group buffing is reduced. That’s a trade-off you have to decide on, but most players (like Zelhyn, for example) go for more group support + DPS over survivability.

If you want gear to make you tankier, consider full knight’s or soldier’s armor (zerker weapons and trinkets). Generally runes are best when used all 6 at once, in order to get the 6th rune bonus, so I strongly recommend that (and with full soldier’s or knight’s, you should be survivable enough).

Hope this helps~ Do keep trying to dodge and learning to take advantage of your defensive skills, and one day you might be able to move to full zerk

maxinion.8396:

MotherKitten.6795:

There are several things I don’t like about your build. Fresh Air is mandatory for scepter builds and useful for builds which put no points into Arcana. You have a dagger build and points in Arcana, no reason to take Fresh Air.

What I dislike the most is taking is taking Shard of Ice when you already have so much vulnerabilty from Weak Spot.

I’ve run similar builds and know from experience that if you take points from air and put then in water to get Healing Ripple you build will be better.

Fresh Air has two main purposes. Increasing dps on Scepter builds and diminishing the negative impact of putting no points into Arcana. It can do other things but those are the main benefits.

Fresh Air is the key trait to PvE D/F builds, so it is absolutely the right trait choice. Please read any of Zelhyn’s or DeKeyz threads in the stickies before you give bad advice. Healing ripple is also close to useless in PvE.

S/D Fresh Air is only applicable to PvP/WvW, which OP didn’t ask about.

Dear Internet Tough Guy,

I checked dekeyz’s guide and saw nothing about fresh air being important to d/f builds. Zelhyn says its important but also says “We have 30 points to spend and we have 3 trait lines to consider (arcana should not exceed the 10 points already invested). Let’s take a look at the most interesting choices.” If your putting max points in Arcana you are not going by Zelhyn’s guide at all so no reason to treat it as canonical. With that many points in Arcana the need for faster attunement swapping through Fresh Air is reduced. Zelhyn’s guide is about maxing DPS and the OP said that is not his goal.

Fresh Air is not only applicable to pvp scepter builds. It is useful for all scepter builds to offset the weak dps of scepter auto attacks.

Healing Ripple is not “close to useless” in any game category. Moving a point from Air to Water would only lose Fresh Air and gain significant healing and would improve the build.

Dear MotherKitten,

Firstly, I think Max has been playing with ele around long enough to understand the class in PvE better than you. I won’t be bothered to explain why Fresh Air is the core trait of the PvE D/F build. If you ask a little bit more nicely then hopefully either Master Zelyhn or Mistress Dekeyz will answer you. Secondly, Fresh Air is utterly useless for any Scepter/X Lightning Hammer builds. This point alone proves your lack of knowledge in the PvE meta. Better stay humble next time?

Lol, thanks Iris.

@MotherKitten: thanks for the nice name. With regards to your points:

Yes, healing is not good in PVE when you can dodge or block every attack and not need healing. 4 in water can be good for some builds because of the DPS traits in water, but healing ripple itself is no good.

I also suggest you reread Zelhyn’s post. The third post in the guide (here, I’ll even link it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Zelyhn-s-Advanced-D-F-PvE-Guide/first#post2333430 ) is entirely about how Fresh Air is at the heart of dagger builds. I then suggest you watch DeKeyz’s videos and figure out how you can do her rotations without fresh air. Without it, you’ll be stuck in low damage attunemets for way too long, and contribute much less to fights.

And for scepter: you offset the weak auto by using LH, not fresh air.

Hi guys,

I’m sorry for bumping this thread again but I just wanted to say many thanks to you all for taking part in the discussion and helping me out. I decided to stay with the 0/6/2/2/4 build; 3/3 zerker/soldiers with runes of the pack, celestial amulet (from my guard because of the agony resists) and zerker+valkyrie rings; yet to get more trinkets but I must say that I absolutely love playing my ele!

So yea, just wanted to say thanks =)