Guild Wars 2

Hi all.

I am seeking an ele build that will be used for offensive zerging and AoE’ing AC’s up top in tough places as well as good AoE damage for zerg v zerg. I was thinking along the lines of PTV since zerker will be nerfed shortly and I want to be able to survive as I AoE the siege. How does something like this look?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQFAWhUMqbW5wwBf0AC5RGeCsQ4BBwAFQpwOA-z0xAoLAiBQ2rIas1tioxqXw0lER1e8ioVLGAzA-w

If your intent is to deal damage to siege then I would still stay with Berserker gear, even with the nerf coming up its only supposed to be about a 10% drop in damage(which will probably still be higher than PVT Set).But if you want a bit of survivability its not a bad idea to mix it up a bit.
I would change out some of your skills/traits to make it more effective.
• Consider swapping out Persisting Flames for Pyromancer’s Puissance- with pvt armor you have no crit damage or chance so no point in stacking fury. Also Meteor shower is not a fire field it will not extend duration of it.
• Arcane Abatement is kind of pointless, there are much better traits- consider putting Vital striking instead
• I’m not a big fan of Signet of Air; if you’re with a group you should have constant swiftness anyways so it makes the passive useless. Blind doesn’t help take down siege either. Consider putting in Lightning flash for utility ( also 3rd cantrip) or conjure Frost Bow(#4 on Frost Bow is brutal on any siege!)
• Conjure fiery GS is ok, since the point of this build is to take down siege tornado is better so you can Meteor shower>Tornado for the extra damage. The GS skills are hard to hit siege with that’s up on walls. But its really nice for taking down doors ( use #4 on door when standing right in front of it.. without having the door selected ( or have something behind door selected) so that you run at it… you will do insane damage to a door.

I would strongly consider ice bow. That thing can inflict a heavy amount of damage to siege, so it gives you another AoE option when meteor shower is on cooldown. It also allows a teammate to attack the siege when perhaps they normally have no means to do so.

Also, you might want to ditch glyph of elemental harmony and go with ether renewal. The condition clearing from that would really help you survive, and it’s on a 10 second shorter cooldown than the glyph (though you do have to channel it for a bit).

Also, if you’re going to trait into cantrips like that, I’d suggest taking lightning flash instead of signet of air. Even though it doesn’t stun break, it does teleport you, which is sometimes more useful. Besides you already have two stun breakers on the build.

If you wanted something to compare it to, I’ve put a short description of a build I’ve used for a similar purpose below:

I have run a very glassy ele build designed to achieve something similar to what you want: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEQQFAWhUMaaW0wqBd0AQ4BBMkgQRFUUUszMA-zkBBYfBhsIIZmFRjtypIas6aYKXER1kCIilRA-w

Yes, I know it looks weird with all those glyphs (I think the tooltips on the build site might also be a bit bugged for being in fire attunement), but what those glyphs allow you to do are build boons (i.e. might). You can actually have perma swiftness with this build by using the healing skill over and over (only really useful for travelling distances), but you’ll often want to use them to build additional might stacks to synergize with the bonus damage from the runes of strength. Runes of the scholar could also work, but a single scratch would take you below 90% health and the extra might duration is useful for this build. If you manage to get up to 25 might stacks (probably need some blast finishers or ally support to do it), it’s about 3500 power (without bloodlust stacks).

Glyph of storms allows you to put down extra AoE fields to stack more damage on an area, and you can even pick what type you want depending on the situation (though I usually just use fire or air). The glyph of elemental power helps you maintain burning on foes while in fire attunement so that you can better guarantee the bonuses of the burning rage minor trait, and it also functions as a stun breaker that gives you a boon when used (the chill and cripple on it can be useful for kiting people around as well if you need to do that). Since the cooldown is reduced, you can have an 83% uptime of the glyph and can thus use it a bit more liberally.

The last utility slot is a bit of a toss up. Many times I’ll put lightning flash or mist form in there because those are very useful, but I found glyph of renewal to be a nice little tool that can really help out an ally. Otherwise, glyph of elementals gives you a little buddy to help you out. Ice bow is always a very real possibility for this as well since it is a useful siege killer.

In any case, I would generally use the glyph heal, glyph of storms and glyph of elemental power, with the last utility being whatever I need.

Tornado will work as the elite simply for the enhanced meteor showers, although you can always use the glyph for another buddy on a lower cooldown. Or just take FGS since you can actually do quite a bit of damage with it.

This thing does die very fast though, but you can make it more durable simply by swapping out the gear (i.e. soldier’s, cavalier’s, valkyrie’s). The other glaring problem with this thing is that it has very poor condition removal, although you can try swapping in ether renewal if it becomes a very big problem.

Thanks guys! I am thinking I’ll swap out signet of air for the conjure frost bow and then put in Tornado for my elite. My intention for Persisting Flames was to make lava font last longer when AoE’ing AC’s but maybe it’s not as important if I’ve now got more skills to use to take out the AC than I thought. I was unsure how important precision/crit is given that it doesn’t do any bonus damage to siege but I’m thinking from the replies it’s pretty important for taking out the siege user. I am open to the idea of running zerker gear but I just hope that I don’t get killed too often starting out u know?

Btw do you guys ever use the water attunement skill 2 on staff? It has good radius but not necessarily as good damage.

Lastly, do you guys get into any sort of skill rotation? I’m guessing something like
MS→Tornado→Frost Bow skill 4 → Lava Font in that order or something

I’m thinking of switching my runes to strength, armor to zerker, and sigil to bloodlust if that’s more ideal.

The most powerful utilities for nuking siege in WvW are the Frost Bow, as mentioned above, and Glyph of Storms in Air Attunement (the Lightning Storm from it does 36 hits, which is much more useful than one huge one against the heavily-armoured siege).

Water 2 (Ice Spike) is pretty terrible for dealing damage since it has a long cast and long delay after the cast - like many of the Staff skills, it’s useful for area denial/pressure, and will punish anyone who sticks around, but isn’t a reliable land.

A tip for the bloodlust sigil: take two weapons, one with the sigil and one without (replace it with Battle or Force or something). As soon as you have 25 stacks of bloodlust, and are out of combat, swap out your weapon - you’ll keep the stacks but be able to make use of the new weapon’s sigil too.

Oh yea I totally forgot about scepter with Dragon’s Tooth. It looks like if I back away from an AC that’s up top, I can see it and target it. Once it’s targeted I can run up to it and spam out Dragon’s Tooth, making sure that I’m traited for reducing recharge. Much of the damage is burning unfortunately, which will only work for the user but the other half (direct damage) works for the AC. If I spam that skill out on its 4.75 second recharge with something like Carrion gear, would that be better at stopping an AC/someone on an AC than a staff ele build?

If you are any kind of glassy Dragons Tooth does insane damage. Both on the siege but especially on anyone on the siege. Reuse timer is good also. Quite a few times I have gotten small groups to back off their ram when I was defending.

Edit: the reason I like it is it is good both defending or attacking. When defending you can’t get pulled off the wall which is very nice.

If your aim is to damage siege, don’t forget that you cannot crit objects. Power is the only stat that matters for that purpose.