Guild Wars 2

I wanted to discuss how pigeon-holed eles are when trying to make a build, due for the most part, due a wide swath of terrible traits and skills. I will start by going over which traits are actually viable in PvP to help make the dilemma more clear.

Great traits in bold, merely usable traits in regular script, non-existent traits (or trap-traits that look good but actually suck) not listed.

Fire: Pretty Bad Adept and GM options – not for pvp
Minors: Empowering Flame, Sunspot, Burning Rage
Adept: Burning precision, Burning Fire
Master: Pyromancer’s training
GM: Persisting Flames

Air: Pretty great Major traits, 1 great minor
Minors: Electric Discharge, Weak Spot
Adept: Zephyr’s Boon, One with Air (FA only), Ferocious Winds
Master: Aeromancer’s training, Tempest Defense
GM: Fresh Air, Lightning Rod (staff only)

Earth: Decent minors, no great GM’s
Minors: Stone Flesh, Earthen Blast, Geomancer’s Defense
Adept: Earth’s Embrace, Elemental Shielding
Master: Geomancer’s Training
GM: Written in Stone (most signets bad though), Stone Heart

Water: Pretty great all around
Minors: Soothing Mist, Healing Ripple, Aquatic Benevolence
Adept: Soothing Ice, Stop Drop and Roll
Master: Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Wave, Aquamancer’s training
GM: Cleansing Water, Powerful Aura

Arcana: pretty great all around
Minors: Arcane Fury, Elemental Attunement, Elemental Enchantment
Adept: Renewing Stamina
Master: Elemental Contingency, Final Shielding
GM: Evasive Arcana

Tempest: Basically just elemental bastion + shouts
Minors: Hardy Conduit (only b/c it improves prot)
Adept: Unstable Conduit (great with Harmonius Conduit, pretty bad otherwise)
Master: Invigorating Torrents, Harmonius Conduit
GM: Elemental Bastion

So now the analysis:

When building ele, you CANNOT get enough hard defense to play a glass-cannon build. If you try, you just get spawn-camped by a competent thief, mesmer, or rev and lack the damage to take out scappers, druids, and reapers. So you are forced to play a bruiser or bunker.

In order to fill either of these roles, you need:
- Cleanse
- Lots of protection
- Lots of heals

Thus, every build automatically slots water b/c that is the only way to get enough cleanse. Next, you take either:
- Arcana to get prot
- Tempest + Earth for prot (not enough auras on base ele to get enough prot w/o tempest)

That means your ONLY build options are:
- Water/Arcana/X
- Water/Tempest/Earth

Water/Tempest/Earth gets dragged down by not having a great GM trait in earth. Stone heart is good on a sturdy-body that has high toughness, vit, AND healing power, but that is undoable, so it is only decent.

So that leaves you with Water/Arcana/X to TRULY make a good build. You don’t really want that X to be earth, b/c earth is selfish and lacks a great GM. Air COULD be doable (it has some great traits), but that still leaves you quite vulnerable defensively.

Thus, the best ele build in terms of strength should probably be water/arcana/tempest, as these are the only ones that all mesh together to give group support, self-survival, and good synergy.

Agree with bold and normal traits and those that don’t exist at all as a choice. Transparent yet no one fixed it.

Amulets

Since ele has to build defensively, you have to consider what amulets best mesh with the chosen play-style. Because you can only bruiser/bunker and support, you are restricted to amulets with +toughness and either +vit or +healing power. Even with perma-prot, having no toughness = death. Ideally, since your best way to differentiate yourself is to accentuate your support, you would prefer +toughess and +healing power, although you will still NEED some vitality somehow.

Thus amulet options are:
- Cleric: +900 powr/toughness, +1200 Healing power
- Crusader: +1050 power/toughness, +560 ferocity/healing power
- Mercenary: +1050 Power/Condition Damage, +560 toughness/vitality
- Paladin: +1050 power/precition, +560 toughness vitality

Of these four, all are flawed:
- Clerics has less overall stats, and eles are starved for stats.
- Crusader’s has no precision, so it is hard, even with high fury uptime, to make use of the ferocity. However, since you probably still want arcana, this can be made to work
- Mercenary: plays well with the hybrid damage available to eles, but lacks the sustain to make the +vitality as valuable. Worth testing.
- Paladin’s: Similar to mercenary on the +vit but no healing power, but has TOO MUCH precision. Fury is one of the biggest strengths of eles, and taking this amulet already puts you at 54% crit chance without enough ferocity to make it worthwhile. This is probably the best for a water/arcana/air that can get some ferocity from air line.

Runes
Runes are a very important way to augment your strengths or shore up your weakness left by the traits and amulets that you choose. Since these are so closely tied to amulets, I will address them as such:

Cleric/ Crusader’s: You REALLY REALLY want to take a +Vitality rune with these two amulets. 11.6 K HP leaves you incredibly vulnerable. Of the +Vit runes available, the only ones worth considering are:
Exuberance : +175 Vit, Converts 7% Vit to Power (82 with these amulets), 5 to precision (2.8 crit chance), 3% to healing power (35) – While the extra stats are nice, they aren’t worth as much without already having a lot of vit
Sanctuary: +175 Vit, 5% Boon Duration, Retal for 4s on hit (30s CD), stab 5s on-hit below 20% health (60s) – Decent, but the extra effects just aren’t all that strong
Soldier: +175 vit, +100 toughness, shouts remove a condi – an excellent choice with tempest

Mercenary’s – Can go a lot of directions with this. Might-stacking runes make a lot of sense b/c they help both power and condi damage.
Fire: +175 Power, +10% might, Gain might on hit for 10s (5s ICD), +20% burning duration, gain fire-aura when struck below 80% health (60s ICD) – An excellent choice here as fire is so much damage, and since you are probably tempest, the run proc is nice for healing/cleanse.
Hoelbrak: +175 Power, +30% might, gain might on-hit for 10s (5s ICD), -20% condi duration. Always a good choice, but if you aren’t building earth, the -20% isn’t as strong without geomancer’s training on top.
Flame Legion: +175 Power, +30% burn duration, Burn on-hit for 1s (10c ICD), +7 damage against burning foes – A good choice, but hurt by the need to rotate out of fire and thus losing 100% burn uptime.
Vamprism: +175 Power, steal-life after hit (25s ICD), steal life after heal (10s ICD), steal life when struck below 25% health (40s ICD) – Another one worth trying, but doesn’t play into strengths of the amulet as much.
Adventure: +175 Condition Damage, +100 Power, gain 50% endurance after heal skill. Perhaps worth considering after nerf on energy, but heal skill CD’s are too long to maximize.
Balthazar: +175 Condition Damage, +45% burn duration, burn on-heal for 3s (10s ICD) – helps with the burning dps, but don’t make as strong a use of on-heal as other classes (like engie)
Berserker: +175 Condition Damage, +100 Power, +5% Damage and +5% Condition Damage – Probably one of the best choices for this kind of build
Aristocracy: +175 Condition Damage, +45% Might duration, Gain 3-might on healing (10s ICD). A very good choice for might-stacking.
Thorns: +175 Condition Damage, +45% Poison Duration, Gain 50 Condition damage for 60s when struck by a poisoned foe (10s ICD) – Worth testing with doom sigil for perma-poison, but gets completely nullified by 1 cleanse.

Paladin’s – Worth considering any of the power runes for Merc. Plus the following:
Pack: +175 Power, +125 Precision, +30% swiftness duration, Gain might, fury and swiftness on-hit for 10s (20s ICD) – Always a strong DPS option, but you don’t need the precision that much
Scrapper: +175 Power, +100 Toughness, Take -7% damage from foes within 600 range. – A great defensive option, that 7% reduction is better defense than almost any other applicable rune
Surging +175 Power, +15% Boon duration, Gain shocking aura on elite usage – Maybe with tempest but not worth 1 extra shocking aura every 75s (lowest CD elite).
Eagle: +175 precision, +100 ferocity, +6% damage to foes less than 50% health – A decent “executioner” style rune, but since you are sustained dps this has a lot less value.
Earth: +175 Toughness, +45% prot duration, gain prot on hit for 3s (30s CD), gain magnetic aura for 5s on-hit below 20% health (90s CD) – Great prot duration, can make nearly perma-prot in water/arcana/air
Melandru: +175 toughness, +100 vit, -25% condi duration -25% stun duration. Helps against heavy stun builds, which can really hurt, but probably better to focus on offense with this amulet.

Weapon sets

Dagger Mainhand: This is great for a bruiser build. You need lots of cleanse to prevent being kited, b/c all of your damage is semi-melee (a little further than true melee). Also needs healing b/c it requires you to stick to someone and keep bashing their face even the face of splash damage. This weapon can work with any of the potential “viable” trait combos above.

Scepter mainhand: Only used for burst builds, but just doesn’t have enough burst on short enough CD. Sustained damage is complete dog-crap, and if you can’t burst someone down you will basically lose. Also, you can’t get enough defense nor frequent enough burst to compete with other burst-builds. Too man useless skills. This weapon lacks a truly viable trait combo.

Staff mainhand: even though this is used for damage in PvE, it is not viable for a dps spec in pvp. You don’t have enough defense to prevent yourself from being crapped on. The damage you do leaves you far too exposed (meteor shower) or isn’t reliable enough (aoes are easy to walk out of or only get 1 tick). By taking staff, you are resigning yourself to a purely support role. If you build it max-tank, you can hold a point for a short while, but will die to good bruisers like reapers, druids, and scrappers. This weapon works well with water/arcana/tempest. Earth can be used, but as since you are support, you give more to your team with arcana.

Off-hand dagger: Good for mobility, decent defense in the pre-hot meta. Can’t really keep up defensively post-HoT. Worth considering for a Paladin’s build, but not recommended for a more sustain-oriented build. Also, doesn’t work very well with a support focus, as the hard-mitigation from focus provides so much for your team.

Off-hand focus: Our best off-hand weapon right now. With the CD reduction on Fire shield (to proc aura traits) and the continually OP earth, this weapon provides some of the best active defense ele can get right now. While it hurts to lose so much mobility, you do more for your team when not just dead.

Off-hand warhorn: this is a pathetic weapon in pvp. Do not take it. Don’t even think about taking it. The only strength is the water-field in water, but a lack of hard defense and no mobility leaves you no reason to ever take this weapon in pvp.