Guild Wars 2

I always find it embarrassing when I have to get ressed in dungeons, so I find myself taking a 0-10-0-30-30 build, and at the very least, I am sharing fire, shocking, and frost auras. Yet I feel as though that I am hardly doing any damage – it has been said many times before, but since the elementalist is the master of nothing, I always feel as though my spot could have been better with a different profession.

So this then begs the question – is it worth it to go a more damage-oriented route? What is the overall difference in damage between a glassy 30-30-x-x-x build and the 0-10-0-30-30 build? If it is, say, 20% more damage, then that only means that the group as a whole is doing around 4% more damage, right? Is that amount of damage worth dying potentially much more often?

Eles are probably technically a waste of a spot in an organised group, even if zerker anyway. You could argue anything other than warrior, mesmer and guardian are too. Having said that, in an unorganised group because of our variety of weapon skills we can do loads from providing a ton of combo fields to stopping wipes.

I was levelling my ele from level 40 in dungeons, primarily pugged but occasionally one or two people i know, building for 0/10/0/30/30 but berserker gear, s/d for the most part. Not built glassy yet so i can’t comment on damage difference but i never really had much of a problem.

I’d look into the hammer build.

It’s hard to use since it is really built with glass but if you’re going to go down anyways…might as well do a hell of a lot of damage in the process.

Using full berserker gear including trinkets. I think it’s recommended that you do berserker on equipment, survivability on trinkets. You are going to be downed quite a bit.

Instead of arcane wave, though, I typically use a cantrip or some sort of survivability to say, “Yeah, I tried to get out of that…too bad my 13k HP didn’t allow for it.”

depends on your party. If your party is dying all over the place you might wanna go full clerics D/D and if your party doesn’t need the heals swap back to Zerker/rampager/knights/rabid which ever one works best in your party.

0/10/0/30/30 has had its glory days taken from it though. Better to change it up a bit. Its still decent but there are better options.

full zerk damage.

whether you’re using clerics, berserker or apothecary, you can still provide boons, so that’s your support.

the survivability comes depending on how good you are at dodging and timing your defensive utilities / weapon skills.

if you go supportive or survivability, you would be giving up on damage.

basically… as a full damage ele you can still fulfill the other two (surv and support) to some extent. however, as a support or survivability ele you would necessarily give up all of your damage. Also, many classes can support and survive better (also giving up on damage)

so that’s the difference between all 3 specs.

You can’t seriously speak about survivabilty in any possible Ele’s build.
Lowest hp and armor can’t be made up with any possible gear or buffs
you get. To survive as ele you just have to move alot, watch your positioning,
try to stay as far from sources of damage as you can, deal dmg and provide
support to the group.
I currently run mostly damager build with staff focused of crit%/dmg and power,
still, I can provide decent support like regen, auras and removing conditions.
As we play only against brainkitten ts in dungeons, it’s really easy to keep them
under consant damage, in your fields and etc. With my build + gear I do insane
ammonts of damage to everything, often I do most damage in groups, sometimes
second after zerk war, but considering my AoE range, it’s not much less.
0/30/10/10/20 works just like a charm after recent patch.

Senticon.3452:

You can’t seriously speak about survivabilty in any possible Ele’s build.
Lowest hp and armor can’t be made up with any possible gear or buffs
you get. To survive as ele you just have to move alot, watch your positioning,
try to stay as far from sources of damage as you can, deal dmg and provide
support to the group.
I currently run mostly damager build with staff focused of crit%/dmg and power,
still, I can provide decent support like regen, auras and removing conditions.
As we play only against brainkitten ts in dungeons, it’s really easy to keep them
under consant damage, in your fields and etc. With my build + gear I do insane
ammonts of damage to everything, often I do most damage in groups, sometimes
second after zerk war, but considering my AoE range, it’s not much less.
0/30/10/10/20 works just like a charm after recent patch.

I’ve proven that the elementalist healing bunker build (pre-patch) could barely hold up to what a guardian bunker can do. Intire party was wiped out by 10+ mobs and only me (at 10% hp) and the guardian survived and cleared the area. Guardian had it easier while I had to constantly rally (living on the brink). Haven’t tried it after the patch yet but I’m not running bunker spec much anymore either.
Running rampager/zerker/cleric nowadays for 500ish healing power, some base toughness and lots of damage (double what I used to do).