Guild Wars 2

Please elaborate on why? Also, Builds would be appreciated.

I’m having a hard time playing my ele, and would like some outside input. I like my D/D right now, but it feels very weak. BUT, when I use S/D i feel dragons tooth is too unreliable.

Personally prefer D/F. Decent damage and great utility.

Personally prefer S/F. Decent burst and great utility.

D/D because its the funnest.. but possibly the most difficult, and most fast paced playstyle

Depends on ur playstyle/goals.

Both setups are viable imo, but they have a different style.

I currently run a d/d build, because it serves my role in my team better than s/d would. It’s more reliable than scepter and offers good damage, good utility, good survivability… but I’ve also played with s/d for a few hundred games and it worked.

If you like d/d more than s/d you should use it… don’t worry, it’s a strong setup. For build I can give you some inspiration/hints:

- You should get some survivability, either from traits, utility’s or amulett. Soldiers Amulett with Zerker usually is a solid choice when running offensive utility’s (double arcane for example) and traits. With more defensive traits and utility’s you can run a Zerker Amulett with Zerker/Soldier gem.
- You should at least get 10 points in fire (10% more dmg in fire) and 10 points in arcana (Elemental Attunement).
- If you decide to go double arcane for more burst, getting 30points in arcana for traited arcane spells can help greatly (shorter cd’s + extra effects).
- Zephyr’s Boon (Auras grant fury and swiftness) from the air tree can be great for d/d, in combination with fury from attunement swich you’ve got huge fury uptimes which really helps, since you’ve got a low base crit-chance when running a soldiers amulett.

Gelrod.1295:

Depends on ur playstyle/goals.

Both setups are viable imo, but they have a different style.

I currently run a d/d build, because it serves my role in my team better than s/d would. It’s more reliable than scepter and offers good damage, good utility, good survivability… but I’ve also played with s/d for a few hundred games and it worked.

If you like d/d more than s/d you should use it… don’t worry, it’s a strong setup. For build I can give you some inspiration/hints:

- You should get some survivability, either from traits, utility’s or amulett. Soldiers Amulett with Zerker usually is a solid choice when running offensive utility’s (double arcane for example) and traits. With more defensive traits and utility’s you can run a Zerker Amulett with Zerker/Soldier gem.
- You should at least get 10 points in fire (10% more dmg in fire) and 10 points in arcana (Elemental Attunement).
- If you decide to go double arcane for more burst, getting 30points in arcana for traited arcane spells can help greatly (shorter cd’s + extra effects).
- Zephyr’s Boon (Auras grant fury and swiftness) from the air tree can be great for d/d, in combination with fury from attunement swich you’ve got huge fury uptimes which really helps, since you’ve got a low base crit-chance when running a soldiers amulett.

Right now I’m running a 0/20/0/20/30 setup with D/D. Can that be effective? What utilities are beneficial for this setup?? Skill combos? :/

Sounds good, though you might want to change 10points from water or 5 from air and 5 from water into fire to get “Internal Fire”, since you will deal most damage when attuned to fire anyway.
For utilits’s Arcane Blast, Arcane Wave and Mistform with glyph of elemental harmony as heal would be effective. Traiting shorter CD for arcanes and Elemental Surge adds some great utility to the 2 arcane spells.

The usual burst combo would be:
air attunement: 5—> swich to fire —> 3 --> both arcanes —> fire grab --> Ring of fire.
If a Warrior or Thief attacks you in Melee swich to air and use shocking aura, especially if he has quickness up.
If you’ve got all/most skills of the current attunement on cd swich attunement, as usual. I usually swich between fire/air/earth for dealing damage and mainly swich to water when I need conditionremove, but sometimes Frost Aura can be worth swiching to water, even if you don’t need heal/conditionremoval.

Dunno… elementalist combos are very situational and thus hard to explain^^ But I guess you’ve already got some and the rest will come when playing.

S/D is easier and much more viable in harder content (dungeons, PVP).

D/D works fine for leveling but the problem you encounter in harder content is that you are range locked in a way no other class in the game is. If you get into a situation where you need ranged attacks…you just die. There’s nothing you can do.

Usually, if I need some distance with D/D, I switch to water. It doesn’t deal great damage, but the auto attack stacks vulnerability and gives you some decent distance to heal up before heading back in.