Guild Wars 2

Hi. I am looking into a Water/Earth build. On paper many of the traits in Water line seem to significantly increase damage in that line. One increases damage to vulnerable targets (easily imposed) and another increases damage while above 90% health, another increases damage to Water attunement, which is common to all of them. I guess my questions are as follows:

1. The damage increase trait for 90%+ health – does that mean that you do more damage when the target is at 90% health or above or when YOU are at 90% health or above?
2. Is the Water line good for spike dps when running dps traits for it?
3. Is the Earth line good for spike dps, and how well does it work when switching between it and Water attacks?

I guess what I am looking at with a high Water/Earth build is – significantly increased survivability, good group support, and the potential for some really nice supporting dps with Staff. I think I am more impressed with S/D or even D/D for team PvP. Churning Earth is really nice I think, perhaps our best AoE of all of them, and it can be combined with Lightning Flash to do some incredible surprise burst with a really nice backend bleed. On squish targets its almost a sure kill unless they have a ton of support. Its a lot of fun to throw in that AoE knockdown on Earth 4 D/D just for spite after you do that bit. :P

Anyway, advice please.

Hello Boozer. You failed to mention what weapon you are GOING to use :P

Anyway, I’m not too sure about 1 – As I’ve never personally tested this myself. I would assume it’s when you are at 90% health or higher.

2 – No, there are ALWAYS better options for DPS. Dagger MH Vapor blade can be decent though, but still incomparable.

3 – Yes. Earth is just as good, or probably even better than fire versus a single target (with S/D anyway) however when encountering multiple foes or players, you should use both, only switching to Air for either RTL > Updraft or Lightning aura / Stun Field.
Switching between it and water attacks is pointless, there is no reason to do so to maximise dps. IF DPS is your goal, and you want to main Earth / Water, just stick in earth until it requires you to switch out for survivability.

Also, 30 Arcane is pretty much a must. Most of your strength as an elementalist comes from the ability to switch attunements on the whim, and gain boons or effects for doing so. Without 30 arcane, you severely limit yourself on these capabilities. I would recommend whatever build you’re running with, to grab 30 arcane. The way the elementalist is out right now, you do not really benefit from staying in one attunement, although the traits say otherwise.

To maximise any build, I would recommend at least 15 water, and 30 arcane. If you don’t, you’re probably going to die a hell of a lot more.

Power / precision just doesn’t work as an elementalist. You have to go support, or support / condition damage.

Unfortunately, it’s the only way currently to be remotely competitive at PvE and PvP. Anyways, don’t just take my word for it. I encourage you to try these things out for yourself. Do your research. If you don’t know an effect, test it out. Do NOT just take someone else’s word for it, or read up on it and accept it as gospel. This leads to many misconceptions and that’s why this forum is in such a state.

Razarei.2809:

Hello Boozer. You failed to mention what weapon you are GOING to use :P

Yah, thats because I really do not want to lock myself into one weapon set. I want something that works with switching so although I do plan on going S/D or D/D most the time, I need a build that will work OK with Staff too. I will have a seperate build for WvWvW zerg fests where Staff is king. Probably an AoE combo field build.

Razarei.2809:

3 – Yes. Earth is just as good, or probably even better than fire versus a single target (with S/D anyway) however when encountering multiple foes or players, you should use both, only switching to Air for either RTL > Updraft or Lightning aura / Stun Field.
Switching between it and water attacks is pointless, there is no reason to do so to maximise dps. IF DPS is your goal, and you want to main Earth / Water, just stick in earth until it requires you to switch out for survivability.

I think Earth is amazing so far in S/D or D/D. Not too impressed with it in Staff. I will definitely be going earth for PvE and small teams PvP with S/D or D/D. BTW, Earth has some very nice abilities with Focus as well. The ability to be immune to damage while still being able to nuke things is just… Wow. I think the S/F earth 4 also removes all conditions as well as make you immune to ranged attacks and deal pbaoe damage… You know, it almost seems like Anet put much more thought into Earth synergy than the other attunements in close combat. TBH, I think Earth has more synergy in close ranged combat than any of the other attunements except for Air.

Razarei.2809:

Also, 30 Arcane is pretty much a must. Most of your strength as an elementalist comes from the ability to switch attunements on the whim, and gain boons or effects for doing so. Without 30 arcane, you severely limit yourself on these capabilities. I would recommend whatever build you’re running with, to grab 30 arcane. The way the elementalist is out right now, you do not really benefit from staying in one attunement, although the traits say otherwise.

To maximise any build, I would recommend at least 15 water, and 30 arcane. If you don’t, you’re probably going to die a hell of a lot more.

Power / precision just doesn’t work as an elementalist. You have to go support, or support / condition damage.

Unfortunately, it’s the only way currently to be remotely competitive at PvE and PvP. Anyways, don’t just take my word for it. I encourage you to try these things out for yourself. Do your research. If you don’t know an effect, test it out. Do NOT just take someone else’s word for it, or read up on it and accept it as gospel. This leads to many misconceptions and that’s why this forum is in such a state.

Well.. That is just depressing. It sounds like you are saying that we are locked into one build that makes little sense. I will give the 30 arcane build a shot but I do not see how maxing out arcane is going to push an Ele over the top. If your saying here that Ele’s are just weak overall then that is one thing and Anet needs to fix that. The Ele should definitely not be locked into a 30 Arcane build to be effective at PvE.

Why is Earth S/D so good? I’m not saying you’re wrong at all, I just don’t find it very good. The auto-attack is ok, but 2 isn’t a great skill I don’t think. 3 is just a quick blind with barely any damage, and while 4 is a great interrupt, it’s not that strong. 5 is obviously strong, but with such a long cast, it hardly seems worth it.

A discussion about this could be awesome, because I’m getting a bit bored of my pretty much constant S/D Fire, and I don’t think the build I have is very good either. Don’t stand a chance in dungeons, but then I totally forgot about staff, just waiting for a decent one to drop.

Well, S/D and D/D earth is strong because of condition stacking and bleeds. Especially the bleeds which are just devastating. Earth also brings significantly increased survivability which is key and I think especially synergizes with Water and Air. That’s what I am looking for here – synergy. You will not spike dps anyone down with Earth when solo, however when your solo your not really trying to burst anyone down, your trying to outlast them and bleed them down, especially when 1v2 or more. Water/Earth or Air/Earth is the way to go there. Not saying that other builds are less viable at all, just that (on paper) Earth is potentially one of the best from my admittedly limited experience.

Nah man you don’t need 30 in arcane, I run 10/10/30/20/0 and do pretty well actually!!

@OP so, for the first it’s talking about YOU and as for burst damage? Absolutely not, however you can do some pretty decent sustain that slowly ramps up over time all the while not taking much damage from Cond and mitigating raw damage, it’s pretty good, but not MY cup of tea…

As for earth, earth is more of the plant your feet and wreck the place sort of style, you’re designed to take more and just sorta outlast as they bleed out, sure you have burst options with Stone Throw (scepter 2 skill AFTER you put your shield up) as well as the infamous churning earth.

Churning Earth + Lightning Flash is just incredible. I have got to do that more!

personally I run a condition ele and went 30/10/30/0/0 the 30 fire is really just so you can switch out to throw out a few fire spells when theyre bleed immune, the burning on crit fi no1 else in the group provides it, and the might stacks you get from throwing out fire spells to start the fight so you can get out buffed bleeds. I maintain ~20 stacks of bleeding by myself and pull aggro offkittennear everyone in crap gear, so dont let anyone say that certain builds are required. personally id like to see what a D/F water build could do.

Not going 30 arcane is really shooting yourself in the foot with a water build. A large portion of your healing and condition removal in water comes from switching to water and dodge rolling with the 30 point talent. Take those away and you are much, much less effective. With 0 arcane you not only can’t dodge roll for a 1kish group heal plus condition removal every 10 seconds, you also are locked out of water for much longer when you switch (which you should), meaning you can only get the group heal + condition removal on attune about half as much. Overall your healing goes down by over half.

My current build is 0/10/15/15/30. The only thing I think is questionable is the 10 air. I do it for the 20% off gylphs, because I tend to use the heal glyph, glyph of storms (usually earth) and often the elemental glyphs. 20% off your main heal in particular is pretty huge and vastly increases your survivability.

You could also take the points out of earth and put them in water, either 5 or the whole 15. Going deeper into water does get you some stuff, particularly the talent that cures conditions when you put regen on someone, which combined with all the otehr condition cleansing makes you basically immune to condition damage builds. IMO though passing up 10 points in earth for earth armor at 50% is very hard to justify because it saves you so often.