Guild Wars 2

I thought I create this thread since I rarely see any other elementalists talking about their own Earth-specs if they should have them. In particular, I want to open a discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of utilizing Earth as you primary attunement in PVE and PVP (I rarely do PVP, so my comments are without any useful knowledge to that end). As well as share Earth-based specs among each other to compare notes on how we utilize the element in question in play.

So far this is the spec I’m working towards. I’m not sure if arcane is very useful in PVE, but I’ve found it complements Earth when I need to add burst without leaving my attunement as such (so this is sort of a mono-element spec for me). I can say that this has worked well even in group events where bleeds do stack up rapidly since I can change over to other groups of NPCs to start DOTs on them as well.

So, if there’s any criticisms or advice you have to offer on this feel free to leave some here.

Am I correct in inferring that you don’t switch attunements very often (your being a “mono-element spec” suggests this)?

If so, to get the most out of eles, they seem designed to switch attunements fairly often. Not doing so would decrease your effectiveness (I’m guessing that you’d lose more from fewer switching than you gain by specializing, but it’s just my guess). If you’re ok with this (for rp, or you’re doing fine as it is, or…), or I’ve misunderstood, then never mind

If you’re primarily in earth, have you considered the Strength of Stone trait (10% more damage when in earth), or Geomancer’s Alacrity (earth weapon skills recharge 20% faster?

Not sure what you’d give up for those — Earth’s Embrace (Armor of Earth when damage reaches 50%)? It’s got a 90 second cooldown, which is relatively long.

Salt Stone gives 5% more damage to bleeding foes, but if you’re primarily in earth, then wouldn’t the 10% extra damage from Strength of Stone outweigh it?

Bleeding stacks in intensity, so the Serrated Stones trait (bleeding lasts 20% longer) seems useful, perhaps more useful than Salt Stone (20% increased duration > straight 5% damage, if one of those 2 were to be dropped)? Your two choices do synergize well together, but may not be the most damage compared to the mentioned choices.

It’s an interesting build, and earth seems overlooked by many eles. Let us know how things work out as you level please.

Unfortunately your traits aren’t loading for whatever reason, but what Nick said. Also, grab elemental storms as one of your skill points, PvE melee mobs would be screaming for a nerf on that if they had a will of their own (decent damage + aoe blind for 5ish seconds when in earth attunement).

In terms of actually killing stuff, I tend to just stick to earth when I’m doing hearts and what-not, a single eruption is enough to take out any non-80 mobs, and I haven’t been back to Orr to test it out now that I have some rares.

That said, switching to fire to compliment earth will increase your damage dramatically. Typically in a veteran fight I’ll send in my earth elemental, lay down two eruptions, then switch to fire and go through those skills (only using meteor shower if it’s a high health mob). For a champion/boss fight, It’s the same, typically switching between earth and fire to use all of their skills, occasionally swapping into water if I need to lay down some healing/condition removal.

Here’s the build I’m using currently for WvW and PvE: http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/elementalist#0.0-3.3.9.16.3-30.0.30.10.0-11.7.12.3.7.10.1

Arcane Shield and armour of earth can be swapped out for whatever (I can’t even remember if I’m using Armour of Earth). The cooldown reduction in earth and fire are basically mandatory imo and the one in water is useful for dungeons. I run full carrion gear.

It seems to me that you are intentionally playing elementalist at 25% capability.
I’d love to find a roleplay guild and if I did I would be “Earth mainly” but outside of a roleplay perspective there is absolutely no reason to only use one element. At the very LEAST you should have two. Fire and earth work wonders together, but personally I wish I could only be earth. I do the majority of my killing with Churning wave but without the other elements to back me up I would feel sub-par. You can’t compare the elementalist in guild wars 2 to the elementalist in guild wars 1. This is a whole different game.

Wulfrim.4793:

It seems to me that you are intentionally playing elementalist at 25% capability.

this exactly. earth is durable, and it deals quite the bleeding damage, but why limit yourself to 5 situational abilities? why not branch out?

water’s got a bunch of weak heals, but that can add up with your 6 skill to heal you for 70% of your total hp… and water’s condition removal is a godsend.

fire’s got insane direct damage. if you want burst, there you go. if you want the highest damage output, you still want fire.

air’s for mobility, and is also for keeping your opponent from running away.

an elementalist’s kit can’t even fit every situation even with all 20 abilities, yet you’re restricting yourself to a quarter of your abilities.

This is the spec I will eventually use. I enjoy it in sPvP with moderate success. Note the synergy. Fire IX will give you an aura every time you use a signet. This results in 3 seconds of protection and 5 seconds of swiftness and fury every time you use a signet or aura. You have 3 signets and 2 auras, meaning 15 seconds of protection and 25 seconds of fury and swiftness. That’s almost enough to sustain indefinitely if you were to use all skills as they come available. Your crit chance will be high enough to ensure you inflict burning often.

The final 10 points can go to arcane, water, or fire. In this example, I used arcane. Arcane III, IV, V, VI, Water II, V, and Fire XII are all decent options for the last trait.

The reason for going mono-element is the fact that while in Earth my toughness remains bonus remains per the trait line, whereas leaving the element (unless I spec heavily into arcana which I’ve done) means I miss out on the benefits of it. Also, this doesn’t mean I remain only in Earth all the time, rather that Earth is my primary attack line of choice to start up bleeds then either turn to water (to out last or tank) or fire (to add burst damage). But in essence, Earth is the defacto majority element in terms of skill rotation since Eruption is on a low cooldown like Lava Font and other #2 staff skills.

Its actually a good build. Used it myself in Wv3 and it works very very well as a support build. I would not go running it in sPvP..

Yeah, this is purely meant for PVE. What I run in PVP either is some support spec (which requires quite a bit of element juggling) or a crit spec (you die quite a bit, but so does everyone else) that revolves around fire and air (best staff attacks imo).

I’ve been building a condition-damage elementalist so far, which means I spend my time about evenly split between fire and earth, and only occasionally jump into air or water for healing or some speed/condition stuff. What’s your strategy for prolonging encounters enough for bleeding to be effective?

Something else to keep in mind is that bleeding damage ticks once per second (as far as I know). So a 20% increase in bleeding duration doesn’t add damage to any bleeds shorter than 5 seconds, and adds the same amount of damage (one more tick) to any bleed between 5 and 9 seconds. That’s left me sort of on the fence about increased bleed duration buffs, since it feels like it would be more effective to increase the amount of damage being done instead; especially in boss fights where the enemy is quickly capped at 25 stacks of bleeding.

Sammy, in this case I try to drag up at least three critters to DOT up and utilize the cripple attack to keep them there while I drop eruption on them. If you use scepter/dagger you can use earthquake to drop them and then use churning earth after you pop arcane shielding to weather most of the DPS.

Hmm, thanks. I didn’t notice before that Arcane shield could be cast during channeling (e.g. while casting Churning Earth); I wish those were labeled more clearly. I might look into that.

It can’t to my knowledge, but it’s not a slow cast either (I believe it’s instant-cast).

Mono-element specs are suicidal.

I love how people make one-liners and really don’t contribute to the discussion. If you don’t like the idea, explain why you don’t like it. If others have done a good enough job, then don’t post. I think that’s the best I can do as a criticism to you DrakeWurrum.

I have to agree with Drake. If you’re only using one element, you’re not playing the class properly. Many strong skills have long cooldowns. If you don’t change elements, you’re not taking advantage of the downtime between those skills.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.7.0.0.0.1.0.0.0.3.6.11.14.24.8.8.7.0.0.0.0.0.0.33.37.40.48.0.0.64.68.71.0.0.30.10.30

This is my current ele build that i use in sPVP. I made a elementalist and got to level 2 and decided to run some tests in the Mists.

I originally opted to use daggers but they didn’t seem to have great synergy with the shield.Not as much as i originally thought.

I decided to test staff and i was pleasantly surprised.The cooldowns on the staff and the shield are actually fairly low.I can use skills rather well.I simply open with staff. switch to conjure earth shield and then when i need to switch back to staff.Then simply pick up my shield again.

So far my defensive capabilities have allowed me to stay in battle enough to switch those skill sets like that.I am never not doing something useful. With the staff i aim for immobilizes,cripples,bleeds and reflecting projectiles.When i switch to shield, i can cripple,knockdown, and even become completely invulnerable for a short while.

What is really sweet about magnetic pull is that you can activate earth armor to tank that damage then use magnetic pull to effectively knock down an entire opposing team in a team fight AND pull them to you while clumping them together.Which of course makes them very vulnerable to AOEs from your team.

You can’t fight as well alone, and your betting off using your abilities to survive til help arrives. You can do some decent damage however and utilize your skills to annoy the ever loving crap out of them.

Just remember you excel as a team player.You can turn the battle around by yourself through all your cc.While i only have 18k hp, i can last quite a while thanks to how i am built.

Just remember that if you ever go for one element builds, you HAVE to have a conjure weapon in mind. They are right about cooldowns causing issues and you needing to switch.Having a conjure simply negates the need for another element, not for another skill set.

Why mono? You have 20 main spells you can cast, with the addition of traits that proc based on dodge/re-attuning giving 8/more activatable bonus spells to consider. As well as the 3 utility spells to help out with the spec you’re going into, which is much easier to combine when you have more options to play with. Furthermore it’s even more stifling to play with mono when you are restricted to such long cooldowns and only 5 spells. You have 4 elements, use them. I’d also suggest trying other classes as they fit the mono roll much better and may be more fitting to how you play.

Conjure, and staff skills combined i have 10 skills there.Then 2 other utility skills to use, plus 3 that activates off of traits, and my elite.

I have as many options as most classes do.I basically have two weapons sets and sacrifice one utility skill for that.

Honestly i think it is the only way mono builds are viable and not limited.

Without conjure weapons, the cooldowns are too much to deal with.Even for simply PvE.You either use 2-4 elements or one element and a conjure.

@Nicomachiavelli

Nothing personal, but why do you assume to think that there’s only one way to play a class when there’s multiple weapons and elements at its disposal? You seem to take a similar stance of trinity class model players when it comes to GW1 where some builds are so frowned upon, that despite operating well in a wide range of PVE and PVP scenarios, that they disregard them as impossible by some invisible/intangible logic.

Please explain exactly how playing mono-element is bad in detail at least to the similar capacity of Micro Hard or Nick Danger. Don’t echo a belief without substance if you want people to take you seriously or to consider your opinion valid (be it here or in real life). Just saying.

I want to point out that by implication duo-spec elementalists are failures due to the same logic that has been utilized so far (that one that does not cycle through all elemental attunements cannot utilize 100% of their trait benefits). So, how exactly is focusing on bleeds and extending them and only utilizing them as the primary mode of attack in PVE a bad build? The last time I checked very few bosses can cure conditions or have immunities to bleeds (or burns for that matter).

That means either the min-maxers as usual are being hyperbolic in their statements or they don’t actually grasp the build as posted. Nor do they actually seem to discuss in a valid manner the flaws of an Earth mono-spec at all (most here have not fully explained the weaknesses of bleeds or dots in general).

So, I will ask again, explain in detail with facts, not supposition, how the Earth mono-element spec as I posted has flaws (not your beliefs, not your wishes, but facts in terms of either raw numbers or downtime or whatever that can count legitimately as a fact).

Also, I need to point out that I’ve even used this in group events where there are veteran NPCs on top of boss NPCs and I did well especially since very few players exploit bleeds as their primary DPS (even among thieves and rangers, which often in open world will utilize bleeds to their advantage in my experience).

bleeds makes people to not doing dps or they die.
proper used IMO elementalist is one of the best classes with skill behind.
I play primary WwW and have a D/D set up with bleed (00322)and ability to take dmg as I tend to go into the group, mass stun, fire ring, water slow etc..and get out before they focus me down.

I find a crit build is a little more fun but then you die a lot easier also.
I hold my own agasint 4 without much trouble.

If you plan on doing dungeons, you will need all of your attunements. If not, it really doesn’t matter much.

As far as quantifying multiple elements vs. “mono-element” playing, does it really have to be spelled out that bleeding plus burning > bleeding only?

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.7.0.0.0.16.0.0.0.2.16.9.12.24.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.35.40.39.48.53.57.62.0.0.0.0.30.30.10

This is a support build I’ve been messing with to some pretty good results. It allows me to do some decent condition damage and control with the earth staff abilities as well as giving any needed protection or projectile reflection to a group with Magnetic Aura and the Powerful Aura trait.

The build also allows some other useful tools as well such as: switching to water for a quick burst of group regeneration, using Mist form to cause damage and chill to enemy groups all the while gaining regeneration and vigor and using an earth elemental for a sturdy distraction.

It depends on what you plan on doing I suppose, For example, the staff earth auto attack, Stoning, may not deal that much damage. But I can see times where an elementalist would be tasked by their group to spamming it solely for keeping a boss weakened.

In general though, I too prefer to switch attunements regularly. But if any attunement would be playable by itself, it’d be earth.