Guild Wars 2

I am creating this thread for the community to share tips and tricks we have learned with Ele in WvW to help new players be more effective. I’m going to start with D/D stuff because that is what I play, but please feel free to add tips for other weapons, add to what I say for D/D or dispute it. I will update the list as more people post.

And if you find this helpful, please reply and say so. If no one replies, this will sink to obscurity fast. Also, if this becomes popular, I will consider making videos to demonstrate some of the things I list below. Onto the tips…

DAGGER/DAGGER

BUILD TIPS

1. Spec a minimum of 20 arcane, 30 water, and 10 air. For Arcane, take Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina. For water, take cleaning wave, soothing disruption, and cleansing water (different traits if you want to be an Auramancer). For air, take Zephyr’s boon. This spec will get you extremely good condition removal, a relatively short cooldown on your attunements, and tons of buffing potential…you basically need this stuff to be effective.

2. Get boon duration runes on your gear…boons are your lifeblood as a D/D Ele, increasing their duration allows you to stack more might, and keep up your other boons longer, making you more powerful in general.

3. Keep lightning flash and mistform on your bar. Both are cantrips so both will remove a condition when you cast, and give you enough vigor to maintain near perma-vigor…in addition to just being freaking awesome in general.

4. Focus at least part of your gear on defense and healing power. Since you don’t have any points in earth, you will want to be sure to get gear with toughness!

COMBAT TIPS

1. When not in combat, you should almost always be in air attunement. It really is the best attunement to initiate any combat with, or defend against a surprise attack.

2. Typical D/D Ele opener combo. RTL to opponent -> updraft -> shocking aura. Switch to fire -> burning speed -> RoF -> drake’s breath (cancel early if you want) -> fire grab. Switch to earth -> earthquake -> (maybe) churning earth. You do not want to always stick to this, but it optimal circumstances, this will do a lot of damage and lay down great CC as well (2 KDs, stun on melee hit). You also get lots of boons from attunement dancing…use this combo as a “starting point” to branch out into other things.

3. Churning Earth bomb. This is a really fun technique wherein you start channeling churning earth, and then lightning flash on top of a group of enemies right before it triggers. If they don’t see you, you will almost always get them, and you can do lots of damage with an opening attack. For an extra punch, switch to air or water attunement and activate an aura before churning earth fires for fury!

4. Earthquake bomb. Same principle as the churning earth thing. You start casting earthquake and then lightning flash right next to your enemy(ies). This basically turns your PBAoE knockdown into an AoE knockdown with 900 range! Wonderful for CCing a group of players by surprise or catching a runner when your RTL is down and magnetic graps fails.

5. Might stacking. Be mindful of your blast finishers. Arcane wave, earthquake and churning earth all give 3 stacks of AoE might when used in a fire field. This can be really powerful with your uber boon duration! Might gives both condition damage AND power, and you use both cond damage and DD as an Ele, so might is doubly useful for you!

6. Ether Renewal. I love this heal. It is channeled so I think a lot of people shy away from it, but it basically removes ALL of your conditions and can be cast every 15 seconds. That’s pretty freaking amazing in my book. Only real danger with it is that it can be interrupted, and if it is, you are in big trouble.

7. Magnetic grasp is great for runners. If a very mobile class with teleports or charges (thief, Ele, warrior, mesmer) is trying to run from you, make sure to use magnetic grasp on them. It doesn’t always connect, but when it does, it will pull you to them and root them REGARDLESS of what they do. If they teleport away, it will jet you right to them, if they stealth, it will root them and show you exactly where they are!

NUMBER 1 tip. Always have a staff in the bag. Get used to opening your inventory (or Hero panel) and swap to it when entering a keep to defend (usually when traveling up to the walls).

I LOVE D/D, love it. But having a staff handy is priceless

Good start to this thread Cres…

I disagree on the traits. It’s way more freestyle than that.
I’d say, 15 in arcane is a good base, anything above is bonus.
30 water is not that much of a must as you might think. There’s also the possibility of going for a signet-aura-build(which lacks stun breakers but gets a ton of protection) and possible 2 or 3 other viable specs. Don’t narrow it down too much.

Some nice tips there. With regard to the attack chain, after ring of fire and switching to earth you could throw in a magnetic grasp for a fire shield (still usually have time for earthquake for that might).

As for the heal – I don’ thtink I could give up glyth of renewal, I can see the benefit of ether renewal but it’s alot of time healing (4s?) and conditions usually aren’t a problem.

What would you suggest for a third utility? (lightning flash, must form already on my bar). I sometimes use earth armour and sometimes the burning cantrip (I forget the name). Are there any better choices?

And a tip of my own: turn off auto targetting! Trying to escape with rtl with auto targetting on is a nightmare (and snow leopard dash). Don’t forget to clear your target before doing it!

Thanks for the replies all! I have incorporated all of them into the OP.

URGH it didn’t take my edits…lemme do it again.

Okay so apparently the OP has become to long to edit. Here is what I was trying to put in it:

GENERAL

1. (From Bsquared) Always have a staff in the bag. Get used to opening your inventory (or Hero panel) and swap to it when entering a keep to defend (usually when traveling up to the walls).

2. (From Nanoha) turn off auto targetting! Trying to escape with rtl with auto targetting on is a nightmare (and snow leopard dash). Don’t forget to clear your target before doing it!

DAGGER/DAGGER

BUILD TIPS

1. (Disputed) Spec a minimum of 20 arcane, 30 water, and 10 air. For Arcane, take Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina. For water, take cleaning wave, soothing disruption, and cleansing water (different traits if you want to be an Auramancer). For air, take Zephyr’s boon. This spec will get you extremely good condition removal, a relatively short cooldown on your attunements, and tons of buffing potential…you basically need this stuff to be effective.
naphack disputes this and points out that it is not absolutely necessary to spec 30 water and min 20 arcane, this is true. Many Ele’s do quite well with a different spec. Still, I think this is a great starting point for a new player.

COMBAT TIPS

6. Ether Renewal. I love this heal. It is channeled so I think a lot of people shy away from it, but it basically removes ALL of your conditions and can be cast every 15 seconds. That’s pretty freaking amazing in my book. Only real danger with it is that it can be interrupted, and if it is, you are in big trouble.
Nanoha points out that many Ele’s use glyph of renewal as a heal and prefer it due to its quick big heal punch. Both heals are viable IMO…personal preference.

8. (From Nanoha) After ring of fire switch to earth and throw in a magnetic grasp for a fire shield (still usually have time for earthquake for that might).

9. Mist renewal. For an almost guaranteed escape, mist form and then immediately hit ether renewal. It will purge all your conditions, allowing you to get some distance in mist form. Once mist form ends, IMMEDIATELY switch to air and RTL.

Thanks for the thread and the advice, Creslin.

I just started playing WvW the other day, and had been playing only PvE up to that point. I feel like I did pretty well, despite my inexperience in PvP. My build is a lot more aggressive than what I’ve seen you and others mention here though.
The detailed version of what I was using is:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVszz9molMTMobMTMx0pVacokcaV
But the short form was 30 fire, 25 earth, 5 water, 10 arcana.
For utilities I went with Lightning Flash, Arcane Wave, and Cleansing Flame.
For runes I am using a Flame Legion (power/burning) set instead of a +boon duration set.

So my question is: Does anyone else play aggressive fire builds successfully in WvW (or sPvP) or are we just too fragile to not spec more conservatively? I feel like the majority of my survivability is based on a combination of being mobile and stunning over healing.

cznrhubarb.5946:

Thanks for the thread and the advice, Creslin.

I just started playing WvW the other day, and had been playing only PvE up to that point. I feel like I did pretty well, despite my inexperience in PvP. My build is a lot more aggressive than what I’ve seen you and others mention here though.
The detailed version of what I was using is:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVszz9molMTMobMTMx0pVacokcaV
But the short form was 30 fire, 25 earth, 5 water, 10 arcana.
For utilities I went with Lightning Flash, Arcane Wave, and Cleansing Flame.
For runes I am using a Flame Legion (power/burning) set instead of a +boon duration set.

So my question is: Does anyone else play aggressive fire builds successfully in WvW (or sPvP) or are we just too fragile to not spec more conservatively? I feel like the majority of my survivability is based on a combination of being mobile and stunning over healing.

Personally, I’m just not a fan of the fire tree. I feel like it has the worst traits out of all the trees. I actually think the air tree is better for DPS because of all the percentile increases you can get…+20% to downed/disabled opponents, +20% to opponents with low hp.

I’m not huge on damage centric builds for D/D just because I think you’ll get torn up too fast, but if you did want to try one, I would recommend putting 30 in air, 10 in fire for internal fire, and 10 in water for vital striking. You can get power gear/acc to compensate for the 200 power you are missing from fire. With this build, your opening burst will be doing 40% more damage (10% internal fire, 10% vital striking, 20% grounded). And if you manage to do it against an opponent with low hp, you will be doing 60% bonus damage!

But just bear in mind, you will be vulnerable to being torn up fast. I would definitely keep mistform on my bar to get out when it gets hairy. I think you could do okay with a build like this, but it would require a more conservative playstyle…you will basically have to get in drop your damage, and get out, or get to where your allies can protect you.

Thanks for the tips. I think I’ll probably just have to give an air-centric build and a water-centric build a try and see which one I end up having more fun with.

I have another question for the WvW ele’s out there that I forgot last post: Which elite skills do people use? In PvE, the Glyph of Elementals was fantastic because it gave me a tank when I was solo’ing. I don’t expect people to turn their fire off me and onto my golem in WvW though, and it feels like it has a pretty long cast time for the faster paced fighting of PvP. And I don’t really like the idea of giving up my weapon skills for either Tornado or Flame Sword.

I play a Sylvari, so I was actually thinking about trying out Take Root…

cznrhubarb.5946:

Thanks for the tips. I think I’ll probably just have to give an air-centric build and a water-centric build a try and see which one I end up having more fun with.

I have another question for the WvW ele’s out there that I forgot last post: Which elite skills do people use? In PvE, the Glyph of Elementals was fantastic because it gave me a tank when I was solo’ing. I don’t expect people to turn their fire off me and onto my golem in WvW though, and it feels like it has a pretty long cast time for the faster paced fighting of PvP. And I don’t really like the idea of giving up my weapon skills for either Tornado or Flame Sword.

I play a Sylvari, so I was actually thinking about trying out Take Root…

I play a human, so I’m not familiar with those Sylvari skills…but I will admit that our Ele elites…suck. Elemental is the only one worth anything. Tornado is the best way to get yourself killed while doing jack crap to the enemy…maybe there are some situations where it is good, but there aren’t many. And FGS is another stinker in WvW…it suffers from the same thing that all conjures do, replaces your skill bar THAT YOU NEED TO SURVIVE with 5 skills, and if you want to use any regular skills, it kills your elite.

cznrhubarb.5946:

Thanks for the thread and the advice, Creslin.

I just started playing WvW the other day, and had been playing only PvE up to that point. I feel like I did pretty well, despite my inexperience in PvP. My build is a lot more aggressive than what I’ve seen you and others mention here though.
The detailed version of what I was using is:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVszz9molMTMobMTMx0pVacokcaV
But the short form was 30 fire, 25 earth, 5 water, 10 arcana.
For utilities I went with Lightning Flash, Arcane Wave, and Cleansing Flame.
For runes I am using a Flame Legion (power/burning) set instead of a +boon duration set.

So my question is: Does anyone else play aggressive fire builds successfully in WvW (or sPvP) or are we just too fragile to not spec more conservatively? I feel like the majority of my survivability is based on a combination of being mobile and stunning over healing.

i built myself purely glass cannon, 30/30/10/0/0 with staff(sigil of fire) full zerker in armor and trinkets(full ruby orbs)
one of the squishiest u can possibly achieve but at the same time, one of the highest dmg u can do also.
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVsc9VoRmxooRmxoxxa9Mokbosqc8kir (skill and trait setups) (considering swapping to 10 water for piercing shard trait instead)
in exotics u reach 3445 atk, 55% crit, 103 crit damage. only 1936 armor and 10.8k hp or something.
built solely for pumping out massive aoe dmg. i usely swap lightning flash in place of glyph of storm if ur in the field though.

while this is doable, i would say only do something like this if u dont mind sometime just randomly dying because u were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
i use omnomberry ghost as food when in WvW usually. combine with signet if i get a few of my aoe off and theres a crowd, i can regen 1/3 of my hp pretty readily

focus on zerg battle, especially any of them where there might be a choke (bridge, tunnel, etc) a downed gate/wall can also be a deadily trap if u can rally enough people to defend. people often think the location as lost once the gate/wall comes down but if u have a few seige and at least half the # of enemy u can effectively slaughter the lot with aoes. (meteor shower has a 5 aoe limit but it is for PER meteor. and the 5 target is reselected everytime a new meteor lands. so in a big zerg, it is effectively an army killer)

i use tornado because while its…sucky it serves has a great disruptor/suicide charge. a tornado in the middle of the enemy zerg while ur zerg is an instant away from smashing into them can turn the fight from a stalemate into a 1sided slaughter. aoe blind and the blowout causes massive havoc in enemy formations

30 water is overkill if you have ether renewal on your bar… 10-15 water as a minimum, not 30

Is there any ele build that can duel/fight enemies competitively, I mean in situations where you won’t all nice and safe (like in regular PvE) and probably take out the staff, that is not some variation of D/D auramancer cantrips, that dips heavily into water and earth?

mjharrison.3209:

30 water is overkill if you have ether renewal on your bar… 10-15 water as a minimum, not 30

I actually really like the damage percent increase from water 25. As a D/D ele, you normally have at least 5 boons up all the time. So that is a 10% damage increase for all of your attacks…not bad for a minor trait. Arguably better than the 20% you get from air gm grounded that only affects downed or disabled enemies,

30 water not only gives you killer cond removal, it can also give you shared auras which are awesome for a group.

A variation on the CE bomb:
Get the traits (in water IIRC) for making Arcane spells give vulnerability and dealing 20% more damage to vulnerable targets in water.
Then do the CE + LF as usual (but leave about a second left on the cast), cast Arcane Wave and swap to water. You get 21% damage boost to CE. With that I think it should be possible to hit 13k+ crits (I’ve done 11k without this trick).

How about some tactics on roles? I think our movement abilities make us great scouts. I often to try scout out the next objective and relay that info to the commanders.

Also, when in a group facing another group, I almost always target the enemy back lines. The ability to RTL through the front lines, disrupt the back lines, and then teleport to safety is great. Typically I target a back line enemy, RTL, air 5, air 3, earth 4, fire 3, fire 4, fire 5, water 5, teleport, mist form. I’m usually back behind my lines at half health at that point depending on the numbers of enemies. Granted we are in a lower tier, but it usually has the effect of forcing the back lines to drop their support of the front lines and to back up thereby leaving the front lines in a worse spot.

I love the ability to get into towers while they are under attack too. Getting into the tower near the citadel is easy. Target enemy near gate, jump down cliff, RTL, mist form to tower portal.

What I like to do when switching out to a staff is slot in Blasting Staff instead of Renewing Vigor and switch my utilities to Mist Form (never remove this), Arcane Power and Glyph of Storms.

I approach keep offense and defense similar to how I play D/D – I never stop moving unless I’m channeling Healing Rain or Meteor Shower and rapidly cycle through my attunements to mix in as much CC, damage over time and direct damage and keep my boons ticking.

Even though Arcane Power is buggy I do notice that it adds a decent chunk of damage on a short cooldown since I’m built defensively. I find Blasting Staff to be very useful as Lava Font placed on the very top edge of a wall often cover the entire area on top in addition to extending my range for those extra hard to hit siege emplacements when dropping Meteor Shower.

If you are in a situation where you’re going to be stationary make sure you regularly use Healing Rain and Geyser, it has allowed me to soak up a fair amount of damage and purge alot of conditions without hampering my offensive.

Furthermore since I’m an Auramentalist when switching to earth my Magnetic Aura provides ranged protection to any allies near me, I particularly love dropping it when I see a Ranger opening up or see a Warrior channeling killshot at myself or someone close to me.

Switching back to D/D is pretty fast, only downtime is dragging my daggers back in and switching out one trait, I’ll adjust my utilities quickly while moving.

@Nalenb: This is my prefered tactic too and works incredibly well against some of the weaker servers and guilds. However this tactic has lately been suicidal to me facing Seafarer’s Rest since they’ve adopted a tactic I’ve not seen used with such frequency by other servers. The tactic revolves around heavy usage of Necro and Mesmer boon/corruptions, they lay a thick screen of marks, wells and null fields around their frontline as well as employ a fair number of guardian/mesmer wards to prevent any access across their frontline. If I’m not stopped by a Guardian wall and successfully RTL through them 9/10 times I’ve had almost every boon either stripped or corrupted into a condition as well having practically every conceivable condition on me other than immobilise. It is devastatingly effective and something to watch out for.

I’m a fire staff ele. I do big damage, all AoE at 1200yd. I wear knights/berserker/valkyrie. Toughness is my 2nd highest stat, I have 1600hp. I use the skills “Signet of Water” and “Signet of Earth” with a “Conjured Fiery Greatsword” in wvw. Having an instant immobilize and chill is wonderful. Fiery greatsword has two escape mechanisms built into it. #4 and #3 but who wants to escape anyways? That sword cuts through people fast as kittens.

I also have mistform as an Oh Kittens button. But… been considering dropping it lately for Arcane Blast which is fun cuz it hit’s for 3k on my toon at 1500yds and has a very short cool down. Like icing on a cake.

Staff is crowd control specialist. When you see the zerg coming towards your allies you can stop or kill them to protect the ones you love. Static Field to Frozen Ground to Unsteady Ground to Shockwave. Now all the ducks are lined up for some good ole fashion AoE damage. Pesky thief snuck up on you? Burning Retreat to fiery greatsword. Thieves hate fiery greatsword. They say QQ I am stealth but your fiery greatsword is still destroying me. When he pops out of his invis use your signets on him now it takes him 66% longer to use his skills and he is stuck in place for 5 seconds. Don’t let him get in melee range or he can invis again with cloak and dagger.

Warriors are easiest to kill. Rifle warrior, zzz, magnetic aura good bye rifle warrior. Greatsword, Zzz, swap to water to cure immobilize or use mistform.

Guardian, I don’t know. just auto attack them, they suck.

Engie, most engie don’t know how to play well so they die easier than thief (which was easy if you remember) Magnetic Aura reflects grenades as well as bullets and nets.

Necro, burst damage this guy and watch your HP. He can’t dish it out faster than you.

Ranger, magnetic aura.. So funny.

Mesmer. Signet him and AoE. Heal yourself. Fire Staff Ele > Mesmer

Other Ele’s : Can be very interesting. Usually my better opponents are other ele’s. kitten magnetic aura.. that thing hurts.

Whats with the overuse of the word “kitten” in almost every post
I read? Is this a “fill in” for other words because people dont have a
broad vocabulary? Being serious, not insulting.

Thunderbrew.7034:

Whats with the overuse of the word “kitten” in almost every post
I read? Is this a “fill in” for other words because people dont have a
broad vocabulary? Being serious, not insulting.

Haha. It’s the swearing filter.

dagger/dagger defense is not that bad.
i use that vapor form thing to get back to the keep often enough.
I understand not wanting to put in a possible future nerfed skill into the guide but…

I use dagger dagger on keeps and hunt for downed enemies.
just because it makes me feel powerful.
RTL/stomp/mistform/ try to get back into keep. vapor form as needed.

I also use FGS at keeps. 1200 range on the cast allows me to throw it up on walls and it burns. i have got at least one kill that way in my few times in wvw.
if the keep walls are not too high the conjure attacks can hit siege.

magnetic shield can pull people off of walls and such too.

kitten is the default “bad word” filter replacement. its a very aggressive filter.

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this. I’ve yet to try it out personaly, but the other day in a battle one of the eles in my group had a focus. He was also very good with timeing and was able to use Swirling Aura to completly nulify 3 balistas and a trebuchet blast on our gate and gave us sometime to regroup.

It’s probably not the best weapon in teh game to run with in some situations. But if your defending a gate from heavy fire, A swirling aura can do wonders in keeping seige off you for a few moments, if only for your team to regroup.

Also I runs taff 24/7 in wvw and pve. Nothing like dropping meteors on a zerg!

frostflare.6390:

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this. I’ve yet to try it out personaly, but the other day in a battle one of the eles in my group had a focus. He was also very good with timeing and was able to use Swirling Aura to completly nulify 3 balistas and a trebuchet blast on our gate and gave us sometime to regroup.

It’s probably not the best weapon in teh game to run with in some situations. But if your defending a gate from heavy fire, A swirling aura can do wonders in keeping seige off you for a few moments, if only for your team to regroup.

Also I runs taff 24/7 in wvw and pve. Nothing like dropping meteors on a zerg!

I have heard of it being effective but it did not occur to me to use it to defend the keep walls and doors.

What else goes through the door without getting the ele killed?

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

I have heard of it being effective but it did not occur to me to use it to defend the keep walls and doors.

What else goes through the door without getting the ele killed?

I’m able to stand at range behind the door and every staff targeted aoe will go through the door. With atunement swapping I’m able to keep aoe on the door 100% of the time.

From memory, that’s fire 2 + 5, Air 5, Earth 2 + 4, Water 2 + 4 (plus a drop of 3 + 5 on friendlies repairing the door).

@creslin “Also, if this becomes popular, I will consider making videos to demonstrate some of the things I list below.”

I would really like this. Maybe with commentary as solo, zerg running, and small group? I’d be willing to donate some silver to the cause ;-)

2. Get boon duration runes on your gear…boons are your lifeblood as a D/D Ele, increasing their duration allows you to stack more might, and keep up your other boons longer, making you more powerful in general.

So 2 runes of water and 2 runes of monk? What about the other 2 runes? Something like Undead for the toughness?

staff ele on an aoe cycle on the gate is i think the 2nd best thing u can do for anti ram besides a cata behind gate. assuming of course u cant just aoe it from wall because the enemy has most of that covered.

just set all aoe target on the area where the gate meets the ground and u should hit a decent chunk of things right outside gate. though i do believe there are ways of setting ram to avoid such defensive tactics, i dont see it often myself.

If the enemy aren’t catapulting or applying reflect/knockback/retaliation too heavily on the door you can even use most of your dagger skills to apply decent damage through the door.

Burning Speed into the door > Splash hits outside
Drake’s Breath > through the door
Ring of Fire > I think is placed through the door but haven’t confirmed
Cone of Cold > through the door
Earthquake > I think knocks down through the door
Churning Earth > through the door

I’ll test Updraft and Ring of Fire sometime although RTL>Updraft into our fire burst rotation is one of my favourite ways to counter single units of siege that aren’t well defended since Updraft will knock the operator off the siege…

Regarding swirling winds, yes it is great anti-siege but if you’re up against a good trebber (macro’s ftw I guess getting exact timed perfectly powered shots) the cooldown without being traited at least 20 into air is too long, best to chain cast it with another ele or two. Also it has been moaned about in the WvW forums a while back and I’m guessing we’ll see a change to the skill.

I’m just leveling my Ele but what do you guys think about running cantrip mastery instead of soothing disruption on d/d? I’ll be using 3 cantrips most likely and will get my vigor from renewing stamina.

And will cleansing water + cleansing wave traits together with elemental attunement give you 2 condition removals when you go into water? How big is the radius for allies on those 3 traits?

Soothing Disruption stays in my traits 99% of the time when I run 30 water but I will often switch in Cleansing Wave+Cleansing Water or Cantrip Mastery+Powerful Auras or a combination of them depending on the situation.

In my opinion the 0/10/0/30/30 build actually has a fair amount of flexibility built in and although you do feel somewhat pigeonholed it can still be customized to suit many different situations.

Nice thread!

I run with 4 x divinity + 2 x water. In my opinion, the optimal ‘filler’ rune would be divinity. The idea being eles need every stat, and when I switch trinkets to berserker (whenever i go staff), having big crits is nice.

Expensive, though!

SuiRyuJin.4615:

staff ele on an aoe cycle on the gate is i think the 2nd best thing u can do for anti ram besides a cata behind gate. assuming of course u cant just aoe it from wall because the enemy has most of that covered.

I’m glad you used the word “cycle” to describe your AOE’ing process. A pet peave of mine is watching Ele’s stand on the walls with a staff in Fire attunement ONLY chucking fireballs, placing Lava Font, and Meteor when off of cooldown.

In my opinion, you really should be cycling through ALL your AOE capabilities to be most effective at taking down the ram crew (not to mention you’re buffing all your teammates with protection, healing/regen, and might stacks. I will run to a teammate before switching attunements JUST to take advantage of that). Eruption (Earth #2) is GREAT for the ram crew, cause they’re usually so busy beating on the door they don’t see it’s obvious animation. It hits hard and stacks a TON of bleeding (watching all the little white #‘s is glorious). While in earth, use magnetic shield to protect yourself (and possibly others is traited to share aura’s) and use shockwave (you can hit people with it from up on the walls).

Move near a teammate or two, swap to water (they get healing ripple and regen, clears conditions possibly as well), then use Frozen Ground and Ice Spike (Ice Spike hits like a truck, very good AOE skill). Again, ice spike has a slow animation, but the ram crew rarely pays attention. Drop your AOE heals on yourself/teammates, another ice spike (the cooldown is VERY short), then go back to fire.

By cycling through all your AOE options, you’re basically always dropping a big hitting AOE skill on their heads. This, again in my opinion, is FAR preferable to standing there for 30 second throwing kitteny fireball autoattacks waiting on meteor shower (the only exception to this rule is if you’re 30 pts in fire and pure glass cannon, but I rarely see Ele’s specced like that).

Also, if you swaps weapons (say from D/D to staff) while climbing the walls to defend your keep/tower, swap out lightning flash (or cleansing fire, etc.) for glyph of storms while on the move. It takes like 0.5 seconds to do the swap, and you get another awesome AOE to use from the keep walls.

Lifeson.4352:

I’m just leveling my Ele but what do you guys think about running cantrip mastery instead of soothing disruption on d/d? I’ll be using 3 cantrips most likely and will get my vigor from renewing stamina.

I don’t like cantrips mastery only because it was bugged to not work with mist form for so long (not sure if it’s truly been fixed yet) that I moved on and learned to live without it. Some people like it, I think it’s “meh.” I’d rather have the cleansing water trait (for added condition removal), cantrips grant regen/vigor (even if you’re getting vigor from renewing stamina, perma-vigor is NEVER a bad thing), and either of the grandmaster traits (they’re both awesome, cleansing water for solo work, powerful aura for group play).

And will cleansing water + cleansing wave traits together with elemental attunement give you 2 condition removals when you go into water? How big is the radius for allies on those 3 traits?

Yes, you will clear two conditions when swapping to water. As far as the radius, it’s pretty small (300 maybe) but you shouldn’t have too much trouble hitting a couple allies if they’re somewhat tightly bunched. Also, be forewarned, granting regen only clears conditions from YOU (via cleansing water) NOT from allies (cleansing WAVE clears from allies).

Use omnomberry + maintenance oil. Stack em. Yes they can both be used.

Another tip, if you see two thieves , run

nalenb.1425:

@creslin “Also, if this becomes popular, I will consider making videos to demonstrate some of the things I list below.”

I would really like this. Maybe with commentary as solo, zerg running, and small group? I’d be willing to donate some silver to the cause ;-)

haha if I have time I will try to put something together.

I’ve FRAPs some things, but whenever I record, my performance suffers, and in a zerg situation this can be terrible.

Nonetheless, I will see if I can put something together…and you don’t need to donate silver.

@Creslin, also relating to your WvW forum discussion, do you run with a set group or are you able to pug a small squad? How are you communicating with the other members?

I tend to run with pug groups and there’s no coordination between players. Before one of the big WvW guilds left our server a month ago I ran with them and they had great communication and coordination, down to the level of coordinating the builds used by different players to gain synergy.

nalenb.1425:

@Creslin, also relating to your WvW forum discussion, do you run with a set group or are you able to pug a small squad? How are you communicating with the other members?

I tend to run with pug groups and there’s no coordination between players. Before one of the big WvW guilds left our server a month ago I ran with them and they had great communication and coordination, down to the level of coordinating the builds used by different players to gain synergy.

Small squad, and we use vent.